by Nalini Singh
Jiana continued to rock back and forth, her tattered nightgown clinging to her slender body, the bruises on her face having turned a sickly yellow-green at the edges as she healed. She gripped a serrated blade in one hand, the entire thing encrusted with dried blood that resisted the rain.
In a whiplash-fast move Honor didn’t see coming, Dmitri slid out a razor-sharp hunting knife from his boot and went as if to slice off Jiana’s head. The female vampire was flowing up and striking a defensive pose in the blink of an eye, her own knife slashing out toward Dmitri. He knocked it to the ground with inhuman speed, and, gripping Jiana’s wrist, held her in place as he put the edge of his deadly blade to her throat. “Now,” he said, “you will talk.”
Jiana’s gaze skittered to Honor. “Help me.” Such torment in her eyes, such a black depth of sorrow . . . and behind it, a prowling viciousness Honor would’ve missed if Dmitri hadn’t pushed the blade a fraction deeper, startling Jiana into dropping her mask of emotional pain for a single split second.
“You created him,” Honor said, sickened. “Whatever his madness, you took advantage of it to twist him even further.”
Jiana’s face morphed, the frail beauty of her transforming into something contemptuous and sneering. “He is my son.” No remorse. “Mine to do with as I choose.”
At that instant, Honor understood the depth of both Jiana’s malevolence and her intelligence. She’d had the foresight to play them from the start, her “penance” with the blood junkies a smokescreen set up just in case anyone came looking. Even if that hadn’t happened till months or years in the future, Jiana would’ve always been able to point back to her apparent distress at the time to lend credence to her protestations of being guilty of nothing except loving her child too much—a child she’d clearly always been ready to sacrifice.
And yet, Honor was certain the love Jiana had professed for Amos wasn’t all a lie. Something had tipped the balance—perhaps the fact that Amos had not only slipped the leash and begun to act on his own, rather than as Jiana’s creature, but that he’d started to attract the wrong kind of attention. “He’d become a liability,” she murmured, “might’ve betrayed you if he was taken.” Surrounded by the carnage Jiana had done—had enjoyed doing—Honor was convinced the female vampire’s hands were stained with far more evil than anyone other than Amos realized. “He learned everything he knew from you.”
A flash of vicious rage in those onyx-dark eyes that turned Honor’s guess into truth even before Jiana said, “I would’ve forgiven his taking of you—it was an intriguing amusement after all.” Words designed to stab and cut. “But the stupid boy planned to take two more hunters after I warned him to stay quiet and out of sight.”
So Jiana had set out to torture, then execute him. If she had succeeded, Amos’s death would’ve been far more painful than anything Honor could’ve ever devised . . . for he would’ve died looking into the pitiless face of the one woman who was meant to love him without corruption or condition.
A woman whose mouth now curved into a nasty smile. “I did so enjoy being kind to you in the pit. I had plans to return, to earn your trust. Your anguish would’ve been all the sweeter when I turned on you.”
“Enough,” Dmitri said, cutting Jiana off when she would’ve continued. “Where is Amos?”
“If I knew, do you think I would’ve alerted the guards?” Not giving any warning, Jiana lunged at the blade against her throat, but Dmitri was faster, dancing the weapon out of her way.
“There will be no easy death for you,” he said, gripping the vampire by the throat and lifting her up off her feet. “You will come before Raphael.”
Jiana began to kick and scream. “We fall under your purview, Dmitri! You must mete out the punishment!”
“First we must know all of what you have done.” With those words, he snapped his hand.
Jiana’s head lolled, her body going limp, and Honor realized he’d broken her neck as he’d done Jewel Wan’s. “It’ll be easier to transport her this way,” he said when he saw her staring.
The violence of his world staggered her, but she was no innocent. She’d known from the instant she decided to step onto this path that it would be no gentle ride. That didn’t mean she had to accept everything as it was. “She would’ve gone anyway.”
Dmitri passed Jiana’s limp body over to another vampire, with orders for her to be taken to the Tower under constant guard. “I was getting sick of her voice.”
“Dmitri.”
A dark glance, fine jewel-like beads of water collecting on lashes black as the night. “Trying to gentle me?”
“That line you walk,” she said, knowing he was pushing her on purpose, “it’s very thin. I’m trying to stop you from crossing it. Everything you do, every decision you make, it has a cumulative effect.”
He strode to the edge of the rise, a black silhouette against the chill gray of the morning, his eyes on the gracious home below. “Near to a thousand years, Honor.”
“You’re an almost-immortal.” Moving to join him, she touched her fingers to his. “You have another thousand to step away from that line.”
Dmitri’s expression was unreadable when he looked at her, his thoughts hidden. “Can you track Amos?”
Aware she couldn’t hope to convince him to take another path when their relationship was barely formed, she held her peace for the moment. “The blood here survived, but I’m guessing the rain will have made a mess of any smaller traces. However, Amos was bleeding badly so there’s a chance if he didn’t manage to get to a vehicle.”
“It should be safe, but take someone with you.” He raised his hand and she felt a rush of air above her head as wings of sooty black streaked across to land lower down the rise. “Jason will keep you company. I have something to attend to.”
She caught the edge in his tone. “Dmitri.”
“I’m going to personally tear apart Jiana’s Enclave property, and I’ll set Tower personnel to ensuring Amos has no hidden bolt-holes. If there are any files naming those who accepted his invitation, I’ll find them.”
Drawing in a deep breath, she looked out over the flowers. “I think we tracked them all.” There were no unknown scents or bodies in her memories, no voices that didn’t fit. “Thank you.”
A brush over her hair, and then he was gone, leaving her to her task.
She used every ounce of her skill, even asked Elena to drop by and confirm, but her instincts proved correct—Amos had bled through the culvert, but his trail ended there.
“Car,” Elena agreed when Honor showed her the tracks, her words crisp regardless of the dark circles under her eyes. “No hint of any further scent. You want me to tell the Tower to put out an alert on vehicles owned by him?”
“He’s too smart to have used anything that can be traced back to him.” Amos’s cunning was a vicious thing.
A single bead of water rolled off the white-gold of a primary feather as the other hunter spread her wings a fraction. “Never know with immortals—arrogance can sometimes blind them to reality.”
“Yes.” Honor took in the dark circles again, the lines of strain. “Tough night?”
The other woman blew out a breath, strands of her hair escaping her braid to whisper across her face. “Was up until five a.m. talking with one of my sisters. She’s going through some stuff.” A shake of her head. “Love can kick you in the gut sometimes.”
Honor thought of Dmitri, of how vulnerable she was to him, and couldn’t disagree. “But when it’s right . . .”
“Yes.” Elena’s eyes met her own, the silver shimmering despite the lack of sunlight. “I’m in no position to throw stones about getting involved with dangerous men, so I’ll just say—living in the world of immortals can be brutal. You ever need anything, including support to tie Dmitri up so you can torment him with a fork, call me.”
Honor’s lips twitched, an unexpected respite. “You still haven’t forgiven him for that.”
“I intend to carry the
grudge into eternity.” Those pale, striking eyes returned to the culvert, to the blood trail, all humor fading. “I’m not a mother, but to do what you say Jiana did . . .”
“Yes.”
Elena left soon afterward, her wings a splash of brilliance against the steel of the sky, but Honor didn’t return to the city. Instead, she walked to join Jason where he stood in the shadow of an old magnolia tree, its leaves a thick waxy green. “I’d like a look through the house.” It was an itch at the back of her neck, a sense that she’d missed something . . . or perhaps seen something she hadn’t understood at the time.
The house was as elegant as the last time she’d stepped inside it—except for the evidence of a violent fight.
Holes in the walls, bloody palm prints, broken furniture, and paintings skewed crooked where they hadn’t been pulled off and thrown to the ground. “If Amos was sedated,” she said, “how did he do all this, manage to beat Jiana?”
Jason, his presence so silent that she was almost startled to hear the rustle of his wings, spoke for the first time. “A slow-acting or mild sedative would have left him with some awareness of what was happening—enough that he tried to fight it.”
“Jiana would have known,” she murmured, “how to calculate any dose to her son’s size and strength. Then all she’d have had to do was taunt him into a rage.” She could see the weaving, staggering pattern clearly now. He’d crashed into the wall there, skewed the ornamental mirror, tipped over the wooden table with its delicate legs, then kicked his way free and done something that sprayed blood over the wall.
“A blow to Jiana’s mouth,” she said, nodding at the spray.
“We’ll know for certain soon enough,” he said, his wings a whisper of darkness as he walked into a room off the main hall. “Raphael will take the memory from her mind.”
Honor shivered at the idea of such a violation. “How do you stand it?” she asked, aware it was an intimate question, but compelled to ask. “Knowing he could do the same to you?”
“Trust.” He gave her an unreadable look over his shoulder, his eyes as dark as his wings. “The kind of trust that allows you to take Dmitri to your bed even knowing what he’s capable of doing to women who edge his temper.”
Startled by the response, and by the fact that he’d picked up that piece of information though it appeared he’d just returned to the city, she looked with more care at that face marked by the swirling lines of a tattoo that should’ve made him stand out no matter his surroundings. And yet . . . Shadows, she thought, clung to Jason.
“Whatever it is you are to Dmitri, Honor,” he said in that voice as deep and quiet as the heart of night, “it’s not like Carmen or the others.” Lush black lashes came down over near-black eyes, then rose again.
Fascinated by this angel who she knew instinctively rarely spoke to those he didn’t know, she touched her hand to a shattered figurine and waited, knowing he had more to say.
“He won’t brush you off like an annoyance or let you walk away.” Spreading his wings to block the rest of the room from her view, he held her gaze. “It’s too late. Do you understand that?”
32
With her gaze Honor traced the lines of the incredible tattoo that covered the left side of his face, the ink ebony against warm brown skin. Hair pulled off his face into a neat queue, he was both sexy and remote. “Are you trying to warn me or protect him?”
“It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”
“I don’t need to be warned off Dmitri, Jason,” she said, wondering if this dark angel lowered his guard with anyone. “I see him as he is. As for the other . . . it’s not necessary.” The truth was, Dmitri owned her heart.
Jason’s eyes seemed, like his wings, to reflect nothing though he looked straight at her. “Many would’ve curled up and died after what you experienced.”
An intimate observation, but then, he’d answered her question. “I almost did,” she said, wondering why her answer would matter to an angel, yet she knew in her gut it did to Jason. “But turns out, spite is a damn good motivator—I didn’t want the bastards to win.”
Jason’s expression didn’t move off her, and she had the powerful sense he wanted to pursue the topic, but his next words were pragmatic. “Things are as expected in this home.”
“Yes—no, wait.” Turning, she went back to a painting she’d righted on the way in. It was the nude of Jiana in bed, her slumberous eyes looking at the artist as a woman looks at a lover. “This was what I saw,” she whispered, tracing the A in the bottom right-hand corner, nausea churning inside her at the implications. “Amos painted this.”
“Perhaps.”
Nodding, she glanced up. “You’re right. It’s not conclusive. Let’s keep looking.”
The black-winged angel was a silent presence by her side as she explored hallways covered by a rich, cream-colored carpet, thick and lush where it wasn’t crushed by broken and overturned furniture or matted with blood. The farther they got into the house, the less aggressive the carnage, until at last they were at the very end of the second floor, where nothing had been disturbed.
It was there they discovered evidence Honor would’ve been happier never to find. The fine sheets on the large bed were tumbled, a bottle of sensual massage oil on the bedside table. On the floor lay not only a robe of bronze satin and lace that Honor recognized immediately, but a man’s jacket and gleaming leather shoes. “Amos wasn’t wearing shoes.” His bloody footprints had made that clear.
One of Jason’s wings brushed her back as he spread them behind her, a warm, startling weight. “Some things should simply not be.”
“Yes.” Amos, she thought, had never had a chance. Then again, so many in the world had overcome the terrible crimes done against them without needing to torture others. Still, she couldn’t help but imagine the man who was her nightmare as a scared, defenseless child. “Do you have any idea of when this may have begun?”
“Amos and Jiana were always close, to a degree that was noticed.” A pause. “We did a quiet investigation, found nothing amiss.”
“They were clever.” Honor thought of Jiana’s tears, how very convincing she’d been in her despair. “She was clever.” Turning away from the silent accusation of the tumbled sheets, she said, “If this had come to light, would it have led to a severe punishment?” If so, it might well prove to be the strongest motive for Jiana’s attempted murder of her son.
“Yes—an endless one. Even amongst the most dissolute immortals,” Jason added, a dark heat to his tone she realized was rage, “some things are deeply taboo. To subject a child to such depravity, it’s beyond our comprehension.”
“So sweet and soft.” A tone chilling in its gentleness. “I have heard such blood is a delicacy.”
Hot breath on her face. “No! Please!” she screamed, her body pinned, helpless.
Laughter. Followed by a thick, wet sound and then her baby’s screams rending the air.
Honor jerked back to the present with a cry of horror locked in her throat. Pushing past Jason’s wing, the feel of his feathers liquid silk, she ran through the corridors until she stumbled out into unexpected sunshine, the rain having passed with whispering swiftness. The golden early morning light poured over her, a luminous counterpoint to the terrible sorrow within.
That ugly thought inside the house, that slice of words and sound, hadn’t felt like a dream but a memory. Her memory, though she’d never been in such a horrific situation. Her heart ached with such pain she couldn’t bear it, the infant girl’s frightened screams tearing her soul to pieces.
“Honor.”
It took conscious effort to close off the ripping chasm of a memory that reverberated inside her mind and turn to speak to Jason. “There’s nothing to find here.” Instead of the joy she’d expected to feel at this instant, when the hunt for her abusers was reaching its final stage, there was a hollowness inside her, a sense of loss that erased such petty things as vengeance. “I’m heading to the Guild.”
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Jason flared out his wings, the midnight shade so absolute, it absorbed the sunlight. “There is a car waiting for you by the gate.”
“Dmitri,” she murmured, knowing he had to have arranged it.
Jason gave her a penetrating look. “He’s a vampire of old. It is instinct for him to treat his woman with such care.” He was gone in a wash of wind moments later, flying hard and fast up above the cloud layer, until she could no longer see even a glimmer of black.
But he’d left her with a crucial piece of knowledge when it came to dealing with Dmitri in a relationship.
His woman.
She had no doubt that that had been a deliberate word choice on Jason’s part, another hint as to how Dmitri’s brain worked. As she walked to the gate, she considered the issue with care—because Dmitri was the most important part of her life and she wasn’t about to lie to herself about that.
She could reject the car he’d organized and call up a cab, making it clear that she wasn’t about to allow him to treat her like a butterfly in a jar. Or she could accept the ride and the fact that her lover was a thousand-year-old vampire, give or take a few years, who came from a time in which his act would’ve raised no eyebrows.
To be utterly honest, it was nice to feel wanted, to feel cared for after a lifetime spent taking care of herself. While she couldn’t define the relationship between her and Dmitri, she knew he would protect her with brutal ferocity until it was over.
Reaching the car, she slid in. Not only was having a chauffeur in New York nothing to sniff at, but acquiescing to it didn’t do her any harm, while it allowed Dmitri to do what he needed to do: take care of her.
A smile bloomed over her face, a silly kind of happiness infusing her blood. She didn’t fight it, even as she thought that her capitulation when it came to the car would give her an excellent negotiation tool when a bigger battle loomed.
