by Nalini Singh
The ancient darkness of his words wrapped around her. She’d already told herself he was a man who would never share his secrets, but she couldn’t not ask, couldn’t not attempt to see beneath the deadly, sophisticated surface when it came to Dmitri. “What did Isis do to you?” Instinct—primal, visceral—told her that that was the genesis of what he’d become—a predator who had very few moral lines he would not cross.
His hair whipped off his face as he took them onto the bridge, the car purring sleek and dangerous over the wide span. “I’m not beautiful like Illium, but I’m a man women want in their beds.”
Yes, she thought. To look at Dmitri was to think of sex. Rich, dark eyes, black hair, skin of a tempting, warm shade between honey and brown, lips that spoke of pleasure and pain, a body that moved with a lethal grace that incited sexual fantasies of how he might move with—inside—a woman. “But you’re not a man who can be owned.” To try would be both foolish and dangerous. “You’ll choose your own lovers.”
“Isis didn’t think so.” No change in his expression. “I was mortal then, weak. She wanted me and when I said no, she took me.”
“Whoever it was that took you, hunter”—a long, slow lick along her inner thigh—“I owe them my thanks.”
She curled her hands into fists. “She hurt you.”
No answer.
It was perhaps twenty minutes later that he brought the car to a silent stop down the street from a modern dual-level home set behind a small green hedge. Painted what appeared to be a stylish black, the window frames and the roof were picked out in a deep red striking even in the monochrome shadows before dawn.
“This can’t be Evert’s place.” He’d been wearing a platinum watch, an Italian suit. Not the kind of man who’d be satisfied with a small, albeit fashionable home.
“It’s owned by his former mistress,” Dmitri answered after they’d exited the car and begun to head toward the front of the house. “Evert believes Shae continues to have a soft spot for him.” He produced a key. “He’s wrong.” Unlocking the door, he entered on silent feet.
Honor followed, reaching back to snick the door closed. The hallway was devoid of light except for the subtle glow of the small wall lamp by the staircase, but the house wasn’t as quiet as it should’ve been at this time of the morning. Retrieving her gun, she held it by her side as they climbed the stairs, Dmitri with the grace of a panther, her with a more mortal stride.
“. . . I’m sure.” A placating feminine voice. “Do sit down, Evert darling.”
“He was staring right at me.” Gasping, jagged words. “And the hunter was with him!”
That voice. Honor knew him now, remembered exactly what he’d done, how he had laughed that high-pitched laugh more suited to a teenage girl.
“What hunter?”
“Tommy promised she was finished, good as trash. Knew nothing, he said. Bastard lied to me.”
“That can’t be true. He’s your best friend.” Rustling sounds, as if Shae had risen to her feet. “Why don’t you call him—”
“Don’t you think I haven’t tried?” A rasping shout, followed by the unmistakable crack of flesh meeting flesh.
Rage, hot as blood, hazed Honor’s vision.
Shae, however, didn’t sound cowed when she said, “I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding. If Dmitri wanted to harm you, he wouldn’t have let the public location stop him.”
“Yes, yes, you’re right.” Relief, spurts of girlish laughter. “Maybe he’s just fucking the bitch. She is a sweet piece of ass.”
Honor clicked off the safety on her gun. Across from her, Dmitri shook his head, and she remembered that, age notwithstanding, she’d sensed no hint of true power in Evert Markson. A heart shot might kill him—and they needed him to talk. Forcing herself to back off from the edge, no matter how satisfying it would be to turn the bastard’s heart into fleshy shrapnel, she followed in silence as Dmitri opened the bedroom door and walked inside.
Dressed in nothing but pink lace panties and a white baby tee, a short woman with café au lait skin, her hair a storm of tight curls, stood facing the door. The instant she saw them, she ran into the bathroom at her back and shut the door, depriving Evert of a hostage. Swiveling around, the vampire screamed and launched himself at Dmitri, hands out like claws.
Honor shot him through the knees.
Dmitri glanced at her as the ghost-pale vampire crumpled in a spray of blood and bone. “I didn’t need the help, sweetheart.” A mild statement.
“I know.” Markson had hurt her in ways that had caused internal damage it had taken the doctors months to fix—seeing him scream wasn’t enough to erase the memories, but it was something. And . . . he’d been trying to hurt Dmitri. Honor wouldn’t allow that. Not Dmitri. “Neighbors probably heard that.”
“No, they didn’t. Evert had this house soundproofed, didn’t you, Evert?”
“I don’t know anything, I swear.” Sobbing words, snot running out of his nose.
Dmitri smiled, as gentle as a dagger sliding between the ribs.
And Evert folded. “He has this rough woodland cabin upstate—in the Catskills. No one thinks to look for him in a place like that.” Wiping away his tears, he struggled up into a sitting position against the bed, his wounds already beginning to heal. “He’s not picking up his phone, though.”
“Number?”
Evert rattled it off, hazel eyes too innocent to belong to this creature, jumping to Honor before swinging back to Dmitri. “I thought you were in on it,” he whispered, rubbing the sleeve of his suit jacket across his nose. “I thought you okayed it.”
14
Even before Honor had learned what Isis had done to Dmitri, she had never—not for an instant—considered that possibility. Didn’t now. Because if she had always understood one thing, it was that Dmitri didn’t share what was his. “Why?” she asked instead. “What possible reason could you have for thinking that?”
“When Tommy invited me,” Evert said, his breathing no longer choppy, his eyes awash with tears, “he said it was a new game all the high-level vamps were playing.”
“If you thought I was in on it,” Dmitri asked in a silken whisper, “why did you run from the club?”
Eyes jerking back and forth, tears mingling with the sweat pouring down his face. No more words. No more lies. Suddenly Honor didn’t care what happened to him—he was too pathetic. “Do what you have to,” she said to Dmitri, stepping close enough that he had to bend down so she could whisper in his ear, the masculine heat and primal sin of him stealing into her lungs to infuse her blood. “But he’s not worth a piece of your soul. Don’t give him that.”
His breath whispered over her cheek, his words a low murmur that wrapped her in lush intimacy, making her feel oddly protected . . . safe. “You sure I have a soul?”
“It might be battered and scarred, but it’s there.” Many would call her a fool for believing that, but there was nothing rational in her when it came to Dmitri. Just instinct, primitive and unrelenting. “So don’t waste it on this bottom-feeder.” Pulling back, she strode to the door of the bathroom and knocked.
Evert’s ex-mistress opened it at once. Having put on a white terry-cloth robe, she followed Honor down the stairs, before taking the lead to bring them out into a small, paved backyard. “I’m Shae.”
“Honor.”
“Evert broke my jaw once.” The pretty woman sat down in one of the outdoor chairs placed around a square wooden table. “For fun.”
Grabbing a seat opposite, Honor focused on the ugly mottled mark forming on Shae’s otherwise unblemished skin. “Why stay with him?”
A shrug. “I was only seventy when I met him.”
Honor’s spine twitched at the realization that Shae, petite and with those bruised human eyes, was a vampire. “Dashing older man, right?” she said, forcing herself to remain relaxed. Shae was no threat, her power so muted as to be negligible—the reason her body hadn’t yet been able to heal the damage caused by E
vert’s vicious slap.
“Yes.” The other woman shook her head, her curls catching on the terry cloth. “Stupid, but hey, we’re all stupid once in a while.” A penetrating glance. “Dmitri, huh? No offense, but talk about stupid.”
Yes, it was. Probably the worst mistake of her life—but walking away wasn’t an option. Not anymore. If it had ever been. “You sound very certain we’re involved.”
“Puh-leeze, as my great-niece would say.” Shae shoved her hands through her hair, either agitated by the events of the morning or constitutionally incapable of staying still.
So young, Honor thought, so vulnerable, and it was a curious thought to have about a woman who had more than half a century on her. But then, time wasn’t everything. Dmitri would’ve been a force to be reckoned with soon after his Making. Shae would always be the quarry, rather than the hunter.
Eternity, Honor thought, was a long time to spend as a victim. “What do you know about Tommy?”
“Prick friend of Evert’s. He’s four hundred years old and still has that smarmy, sweaty look that says a man’s thinking about getting you naked—and not in a nice way.” The vampire tugged her robe tighter around herself. “Evert wasn’t lying about the cabin. They took me there once.” Her silence was heavy with secrets too terrible to be voiced.
Neither of them spoke for long moments filled with the cheerful sounds of birds scolding one another, their day long begun.
“I’m so afraid,” Shae said when the birds scattered with a bright chorus, fine lines pinching out from her mouth, “that that’s what I’ll become as I age. Depraved, finding pleasure only in the humiliation and suffering of others.” A look of unhidden concern. “Even Dmitri . . . he’s barely on this side of the line, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” He was no innocent, would never be one. “Tell me more about Tommy.”
“He’s good with money so he has financial power, but is otherwise weak.” Fingers playing with the lapels of her robe, dropping to twist the ends of the belt at her waist. “They like to pretend to be big men, but they’re sheep, him and Evert both.”
“Yes.” Dmitri’s deep voice from behind Honor as he stepped out through the kitchen. “They were minor pawns in the scheme of things.”
For the first time since she’d met him, she didn’t angle her body to keep him in her line of sight. Instead, she allowed him to come up behind her, to place his hand on the back of the wooden chair where she sat, brush his thumb over the skin of her neck.
Terror, visceral and gut-deep. Her heart rabbiting against her ribs.
Gritting her teeth, she held her position, a small rebellion, a tiny reclaiming of who she’d been before the pit. “No screams,” she said, the words husky.
“I had my orders.” Continuing to play his thumb over her now fear-dampened skin, he spoke to the other vampire. “Evert won’t bother you again. Someone will be picking him up in about twenty minutes.”
Shae shuddered. “I—Will—” Her eyes landed on Honor, not Dmitri. “Will you stay? If he wakes up . . .”
“Yes,” she said, caught by the irony of Shae looking to safety from a woman who was currently fighting not to choke on the rancid taste of her own terror.
Dmitri tugged at a tiny curl of hair at her nape. “Look up, Honor.”
Illium was a stunning sight against the lightening sky, his wings sweeping through the air with a grace that made him seem a half-forgotten dream. When he landed in the courtyard, his wings flaring out for an instant, he was at once very much a man, physical and sexual, and an unattainable fantasy.
She could never see herself falling for such a beautiful man. No, it seemed her tastes ran darker, rougher, edgier. But she could admire him . . . and she could wonder about the shadows beyond the gold, shadows that resonated with something hidden inside of her. “Bluebell,” she said, remembering from Erotique. “Pretty name.”
“I call Dmitri Dark Overlord.”
“Shae,” Dmitri said and the female vampire rose at once to walk quickly into the house. “Now, pretty Bluebell”—another languid stroke across her skin—“tell the Overlord what you discovered.”
Grinning, Illium perched on the wooden table, one of his wings a bare inch from Honor. “I found this.” He passed over a textured cream-colored envelope. “It was on the nightstand, put there by the maid. Came tonight.”
Honor reached up to grab the envelope before Dmitri could, running her finger under the flap to unseal it. Inside was a single sheet of heavy paper with a very simple message.
The second hunt begins soon. I hope you will find this prey as delicious as the first—the Guild has the most appetizing personnel.
Honor put the letter on the table. Seeing its contents, Illium and Dmitri exchanged words, but their voices were drowned out by the crashing thunder inside her head. “No one else,” she whispered and it was a vow. “The bastards get no one else.”
Dmitri’s response was a simple “They won’t.” His hand curved around her nape . . . and she didn’t jerk away.
Ten minutes later, just after he’d finished speaking to one of his men in the vicinity of the Catskills, Dmitri got a call from Sorrow. “I think I did something, Dmitri.”
Long-dormant instincts struggled to wake at the fear-thinned sound of her voice. He crushed them—he couldn’t afford to think of the young woman the way he’d thought of Misha and Caterina. “Where are you?”
“The park near my house, by the big birdbath.” Shaken words, a spirit close to broken. “I’m sorry I sneaked out. I just wanted to go for a walk, that’s all.”
“Stay where you are,” he said, those old, buried instincts attempting to surface once again, harsh and ragged from centuries of disuse. “Illium’s going to fly to you—he won’t land,” he added, because he could feel her panic through the phone lines. And whatever else he might be, he wasn’t bastard enough to terrorize her in such a way. “I’ll be right behind him.”
Illium rose into the air as soon as Dmitri gave him the details. Dmitri then called Sorrow’s watch detail to tell them where to locate her. “Don’t approach.”
“Shae,” Honor said when he hung up. “She’s scared.”
He saw compassion in those midnight-forest eyes, was rocked by her ability to feel the tender emotion. But he wasn’t like her—everything good in him had burned as his son’s tiny body burned in the ruins of the cottage he’d built for his bride. So fast Misha had disappeared, so impossibly fast. The crackle of the flames, the whistle of the wind, none of it had drowned out the echo of the last words his son had ever spoken to him.
“Don’t let go, Papa.”
“Good,” he said, shoving the memories back in the steel box that could no longer contain them, “fear will keep her from being stupid.” Striding through to the living area where Shae hovered, he grabbed her chin. “Say a word about what you learned here tonight, and you’ll be joining Evert as Andreas’s guest.”
The vampire went sheet white. “I w-won’t. N-never.”
“Dmitri.”
He released Shae because she’d gotten the point, and headed out the door just as the retrieval team drove up, a furious Honor by his side. “There was no need to terrify her.” The scent of wildflowers hit him hard as he got into the driver’s seat of the Ferrari, scraping against the raw wound that was the memory of Misha’s funeral pyre.
“She’s a victim.” Honor slammed her own door shut.
Feeling vicious, he didn’t bother to sugarcoat his opinion as he guided the car away from the curb. “She’s weak, a parasite. A year, maybe not even that, and she’ll have found another Evert to bleed.”
“You’re talking about a woman with all the hallmarks of abuse,” Honor argued, stubborn in her belief, so like another woman who had once fought with him, wild passion in her voice. “It’ll take her time to break the cycle.”
He heard what she didn’t say—that it had taken her months to crawl up out of that dark pit into which she’d been thrown. “Sh
ae,” he said, punching the car into higher gear, “has had the span of a mortal life to find her spine. She hasn’t, and she never will.”
Honor sucked in a breath. “That’s brutal.”
“It comes with the territory.” He’d stood over a dead schoolgirl’s body not long ago, tugged the sheet over her small, innocent face. “Vampires who don’t fear consequences create carnage.”
“I know—I wasn’t born yesterday.” Reaching back, she tightened her ponytail.
He wanted to fist his hand in that luxuriant ebony hair and kiss the temper right out of her. The only other woman he’d ever been tempted to do that with had bitten him hard on the lip and told him he deserved it. Later, after her anger had cooled, she’d turned to him in bed and kissed him, hesitant and sweet, his new wife who was too shy to make the first move.
A caress of wildflowers, the past and the present colliding as they were doing all too often since Honor walked into his life. But these memories . . . they were some of the good ones. “Tell me,” he said, because he heard a story in her voice, and he had the driving need to know everything he could about Honor St. Nicholas.
A long, cool silence.
Unexpectedly, he found his lips curving. “Illium did warn you I’m no gentleman.”
A feminine snort, but she began to speak. “One of my first hunts was an older vampire. He wasn’t under Contract, so it wasn’t about that.”
Intrigued because an infraction by a vampire who had served out his Contract was considered an internal matter, Dmitri said, “What did he do?”
“Stole something from his angel—an ancient artifact.” She tucked an escaped strand of hair behind her ear, the act so familiar that Dmitri felt as if he’d watched her do it a thousand times. “The angel had no one close to the small village where he knew the vamp was hiding, but I wasn’t very far away, so the Guild asked me to keep an eye on him until the angel’s people got there.”
Dmitri said nothing when she went silent, almost able to touch the heavy black that painted the tones of her voice, in stark contrast to the vibrant blues and white-gold of morning, the touch of rain having passed out into the Atlantic.
