Archangel's Blade (19 page)

“Threats now, Dmitri?” It was somehow an intimate question, his name pronounced with an accent so perfect, it was a caress.

“You always knew I wasn't a nice man,” he said, wanting to hear that voice in bed, in the warm hush of a pleasure-drenched night. “Go home. Sleep. Be a good girl”—he leaned close enough that their breath mingled, close enough that kissing her would take only the dip of his head—“and I'll let you come on the chopper tomorrow morning.”

“If what you told me about Isis wasn't bullshit,” Honor said, her voice vibrating with the force of her emotions, “then you know
exactly
how I feel right now. You know.”

Dmitri's response was pitiless. “I also know that if the bastards slip through your grasp because you're too weak, the regret will make you bleed worse than any wound.”

Folding her arms, Honor stalked to the window. “Could you have slept?” It wasn't about reason, about anything so sane.

“I didn't,” he said, walking to stand behind her, dangerous, muscled, immovable. “But I wasn't mortal.” No emotion in his voice.

Isis, she thought, had done far worse to Dmitri than a forced Making and bedding. “I came to tell you,” she said, feeling a deep, inexorable anger that had nothing to do with their fight and everything to do with a long-dead angel, “that I figured out the tattoo on the way back from Sorrow's home.”

Turning, she looked into that sensual face that had haunted her since the first time she'd seen it and knew there was no way to protect him from this. Why she felt a desperate need to try, until it was a tearing agony within her, she didn't know. “It says, ‘To remember Isis. A gift of grace. To avenge Isis. A rage of blood.' Someone's out to take vengeance for the death of a monster.”

 

 

Honor didn't go up to her own apartment when she arrived
at her building. Her emotions were a kaleidoscope of shattered pieces—anger, pain, aggravation, that strange, piercing desolation . . . and a
need
that seemed to be growing ever stronger. Realizing Ashwini might still be in the city, she knocked on the other hunter's door and found herself invited in for ice cream and a movie.

“Hepburn,” Ashwini said, digging into the quart of mint chocolate chip she'd threatened to defend to the death with her spoon if Honor so much as looked in its direction. “Classic.”

Frustration churned within her at being forced to wait to continue the hunt, but though it galled, Dmitri was right. Her bones were tired, her mind fuzzy after days of nightmare-ridden sleep. So she dug around in Ash's fridge for the butter pecan that was her personal favorite, and, boots abandoned by the door, sprawled on the ridiculously comfortable armchair her friend had had for as long as Honor had known her. “We've seen this one before.”

“I like it.”

“Why are you in your pajamas?” The other hunter was dressed in an old gray T-shirt and a pair of faded fleece pants with dancing sheep on them. “It's two in the afternoon.”

“I'm on vacation today.”

No sounds except that of ice cream being seriously eaten and the repartee on the screen. It would surprise many people how tranquil being with Ashwini could be. Most had never seen the other woman without the prickly emotional armor that Honor had recognized the instant they met at a Guild bar in Ivory Coast, didn't understand that she was one of the most accepting people Honor had ever met. Flaws, scars, none of it scared her.

Scooping up more mint and chocolate, Ash said, “You won't believe what Janvier did this time.”

“Can't be too bad since you're not inviting me to his funeral.” Ashwini and the two-hundred-something vampire had a complicated relationship.

Reaching over to the side table, Ashwini picked up and passed a small box to Honor. It proved to hold a stunning square-cut sapphire pendant set in platinum, the setting a little jagged, a fraction off center . . . as if the person who'd commissioned it knew that nothing too smooth, too perfect would've suited Ash.

Point to you, Cajun.
“Are you going to wear it?”

“It'll only encourage him.”

“Oh, so it's okay if I ask him out?” she teased. “He is hella sexy,
cher
.”

“Funny.” Ash stabbed her spoon at her. “Tell me about Dmitri.”

Of course her best friend had figured it out. “I feel like a moth drawn to the flame.” Contact would hurt, might be fatal, and yet she couldn't stop herself. Obsession or compulsion, she didn't know, but she did know that before this was over, she'd either end up in Dmitri's bed . . . or one of them would bleed darkest red.

Dmitri wrapped Elena in tendrils of whiskey and night-
blooming roses, rich and seductive, as the Guild Hunter walked into the library of the home she shared with Raphael in the Angel Enclave, the white-gold tips of her wings brushing along the carpet.

Her jawline firmed, pale eyes narrowing. “Weak effort, Dmitri.”

It had been, his attention on another woman. “I was being polite.” Elena was more sensitive to his ability than any other hunter he'd ever met, likely as a result of the horrific massacre that had ended her childhood.

Dmitri would have sheltered and protected the child she'd been, but he couldn't, wouldn't, have mercy on the adult—because he wasn't the only vampire who could lure with scent. The other members of the Cadre wouldn't hesitate to use Elena's vulnerability to this most insidious of weapons against her. And Elena was Raphael's heart.

“I heard about H—Sorrow.” A solemn expression, quiet words. “How is she?”

“Uncertain.” The girl's future remained a fragile thing that could be destroyed with a single, brutal act. “She acted in self-defense today, but she seems unable to harness or channel the violence.”

Elena's head turned toward the door an instant before Dmitri sensed Raphael's approaching presence. Spreading out those wings of midnight and dawn behind her, she walked to touch her hand to Raphael's chest, something silent and powerful passing between the archangel and his consort.

It remained incomprehensible to Dmitri how Elena, an angel with a weak mortal heart, had formed such a bond with Raphael. But he had taken a vow and he would defend that bond to his last breath. “Sire,” he said when the two drew apart, “I would speak to you.”
It's about Isis.
He didn't know how much the archangel had told his consort.

I see.
Eyes of an intense, infinite blue met his before shifting to Elena. “Your indulgence.”

Elena glanced between them, gaze perceptive. “I need to call Evelyn,” she said, naming her youngest sister. “I'll do it from the solar.”

“Wait.” Dmitri and Elena agreed on little, but he'd never questioned her loyalty to those who were hers. “You may want to talk to Beth as well. It appears Harrison has been forced to seek alternative accommodation.” Andreas had mentioned it during their meeting after he spoke to Leon and Reg.

Now Elena's mouth tightened. “Good on Beth if she's kicked him out.” A pause. “Thanks.”

Dmitri held his silence until she left. “She doesn't know.” He didn't find that the least surprising. Raphael was well into his second millennium of existence. A being that ancient had many memories.

“She will before this night is out. I won't have her vulnerable.” The archangel walked with him to step out on the sprawling green of the lawn that led to the cliff and the constant rush of a Hudson tinged red-gold by the setting sun.
I will not speak that which is yours to tell.

I know.
He agreed with Raphael's decision to brief Elena, because while he couldn't accept the weakness she represented in the archangel's defenses, he understood that once a man claimed a woman, it was his task to protect her. Dmitri had failed in that task, failed his Ingrede, and it was a failure for which he would never forgive himself. “Did she truly save your life against Lijuan?” he asked, wrenching his mind from the raw agony of the past and the memory of a woman with eyes of slanted brown who had trusted him to keep her safe.

“Do not sound so disgruntled, Dmitri.”

“I merely find it an impossible truth.” And yet it was a truth, so he would add it to what he knew of Elena. “Isis . . . it seems we left a stone unturned.” He told the archangel the full details of the dead vampire's dismembered body, the tattoo.

“Bold and stupid both.” Wings of white streaked with gold spread a fraction.

Dmitri took a step back, examined the feathers. “Your wings, the gold is spreading.” His primaries were almost totally metallic, the sunlight playing off the filaments in glittering sparks.

“Yes,” Raphael said, strands of hair lifting off his face in the early evening breeze. “It became apparent the night after I confronted Lijuan. Elena thinks I am evolving in some way. We shall see.”

The last time an archangel had evolved, she had raised the dead. But Raphael had never committed the atrocities that stained Lijuan's hands, and he was the son of two archangels. His evolution couldn't be predicted.

“I've compiled a list of all those who remained loyal to Isis till the end,” Dmitri said, even as he considered the tactical advantages of obscuring the truth of why Raphael's wings had altered in color. “Jason is tracking down their whereabouts.” None had been seen entering the country, but that meant nothing.

“I'll speak to him. I've kept a discreet watch on certain people through the centuries.” A glance out of those eyes of inhuman blue. “As have you, Dmitri.”

“None of them could have done this.” He'd already made certain of it. “However, games,” he said, “no matter how vicious, are something I can handle with ease.” Even if those games attempted to awaken the ghost of an angel who hadn't deserved the quick death they'd dealt her. “It's the second situation that's become more critical.”

Raphael listened in silence as Dmitri laid out the facts of the mortal “hunt.” “This Honor,” the archangel said when Dmitri finished, his tone icy with anger, “she is competent?”

“Yes.” Brilliant mind, human heart, ancient eyes.

“Elena is a better tracker.”

Impossible to dispute, since Elena was hunter-born, a bloodhound as far as vampires were concerned. “That skill isn't necessary at present.” And this was Honor's hunt, as Isis had been Dmitri's. “We're digging out the snakes, not chasing them.”

“An apt analogy.” Wings rustling as he folded them tight to his back, Raphael turned to look Dmitri straight in the eye. “Many believe such depravity is exactly what you would savor.”

Dmitri knew that, understood full well how close he was to crossing lines that could not be uncrossed. “It seems even I am not yet that degenerate.”

You would never harm a woman in such a way, Dmitri.
The archangel's voice in his mind, the purity of it almost painful.
We both know this. It's why I allow you to push Elena in ways for which I would kill another.

Together they walked back into the library and down the corridor that led to the front entrance. “Venom will need to leave the city soon,” Raphael said. “Galen is strong, but I want him to have another of the Seven in the Refuge. Naasir must remain in Amanat.”

Dmitri blew out a breath. “Aodhan is serious about coming to New York?”

“Yes.”

“He'll cause chaos.” With eyes of fractured glass and wings of diamond brilliance, Aodhan stood apart even amongst immortals.

“He is apt to fly so high that mortals will glimpse only a shadow that splinters light.”

Dmitri nodded. Aodhan had an aversion to touch, one Dmitri understood. He'd been in the Medica when the angel had been brought in two hundred years ago. Raphael had carried Aodhan's emaciated and dirt-encrusted body in his arms, laid him down with the utmost care so as not to crush his wings, which were nothing much more than a few slivers of tendon hanging on to bone.

It had been, Dmitri thought, the last time anyone had held Aodhan in any way, shape, or form. “I'll work out the transfer.” He rubbed his jaw. “I need someone on Sorrow, and Aodhan won't be suitable.”

“Janvier.”

“Yes.” The smooth-talking Cajun was no longer under Contract, but he'd given his loyalty to Raphael and it was a loyalty that went to the core. “I'll contact him closer to the transfer date.”

“Dmitri.”

“Sire.”

“Are you well?”

Dmitri knew what the archangel was asking. “Isis is dead and buried, this sycophant nothing but an irritation.” The ghosts who haunted him were far gentler . . . and cut so deep that he bled inside without surcease.

 

 

The dream wasn't a nightmare. That fact startled Honor
enough that she almost woke, but the pleasure, oh, the pleasure was too much to resist.