by Nalini Singh
“Because,” Raphael said, ignoring her order, “he bespoke our darkest truth to a human.” The way he said that, the language, made it impossible to ignore his age, his immortality.
Captured despite herself, she asked, “What happened to the mortal?”
“We took her memories.” He cupped her cheek. “And Illium was forbidden from speaking to her ever again.”
“Did he love her?”
“Perhaps.” His face said that that didn’t matter. “He watched over her for the rest of her days, knowing she no longer knew him. Is that love?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I’ve seen love defined a thousand ways over the centuries. There is no constant.” He stared at her, his own face expressionless. “If Illium loved his mortal, then he was a fool. She’s been dust for centuries.”
“Heartless,” she whispered, sensing the warmth of the rising sun at her back. How long had they stood here that the fading edge of night had turned to dawn? “Couldn’t you have allowed him a lifetime with the woman he loved?”
“No.” Sharp, clean lines, a face without mercy. “For if one mortal knows, soon another will. You have little concept of secrecy.”
Elena saw in his absolute statement, her future. “Not my memories,” she reminded him. “Hunt me to ground if it comes to that, but don’t you dare take my memories.”
“You’d rather die?”
“Yes.”
“So be it.”
Her blood fired at the finality of those three short words, knowing he’d spoken them as a vow. “You do realize that to kill me, you’ll have to catch me.”
His smile held the cool arrogance of a man who knew exactly how dangerous he was. “It’ll break the ennui of age.”
She snorted and glanced outside. “Rain’s stopped. I’ll go out, see if I can pick up a trail in case Uram didn’t spend the night in Stupor.”
“Eat first.” He moved back. “We never stopped running search patterns—if he’d killed again, I would’ve heard by now.”
Feeling jittery but knowing she’d do better with some nourishment, she agreed. “I’ll grab something quick.”
“Will you begin your search at Michaela’s?”
“Might as well. If he is up and around, he’ll probably come by to visit her. There’s—” Something rang in a familiar pattern. “Damn, where did I put it?”
“Here.” Raphael picked her cell phone out of the clothing she’d thrown over the small bag that held her stuff. “Catch.”
“Thanks.” One glance at the caller display was enough to make her stomach churn. “Hello, Jeffrey.” She wondered what her father would say if she told him she was standing in a room with a half-naked archangel. Probably ask her to strike a deal while said archangel was befuddled with sex.
Looking at the profile of Raphael’s highly intelligent face as he switched on a laptop she hadn’t noticed until then, she felt her lips curve in a tight grin. “What is it?” The urge to hang up was a pounding need in her blood, but she’d gnaw off her own arm before she allowed Jeffrey to beat her into sniveling cowardice.
“You need to come to my office.”
Something in his tone cut through the complex, turbulent layers of her anger. “Is someone there?”
“Now, Elieanora.” He hung up.
“I need to get to my father’s brownstone.”
Turning from the laptop, Raphael raised an eyebrow. “I thought you’d said what you needed to say to your father yesterday?”
She didn’t bother to ask how he knew—it wasn’t as if she and Jeffrey had made any attempt to keep the volume down. “Something’s wrong. Is the car still out front?”
He paused and she realized he was probably talking to the vampires mind-to-mind. “Dmitri will drive you.”
“Fine.” She began to stride out. “If this is one of Jeffrey’s power games—Damn it, no, I’m not going to drop everything just because he tells me to.” She pulled out the phone and called him back.“I’m on a hunt,” she said as soon as he picked up. “I don’t have time to come play happy families.”
“Then perhaps you’ll find the time to come clean up the mess your friend left behind.”
Her heart chilled. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m fairly sure she was still alive when he split her open and skinned off the flesh to display her broken rib cage.”
33
Raphael flew her to her father’s, landing on the street with a smooth grace that would’ve stunned onlookers, had anybody been watching. But it was too early for anyone but the birds, especially in this exclusive area.
The scent hit her the second they landed. The by-now familiar bite of acid tinged with the thick richness of fresh blood. “Uram,” she said to Raphael as they started up the steps. “He knows I’m tracking him.”
Raphael scanned the street. “Either he stripped the mind of someone who knew about your involvement, or he saw you on the hunt.”
“Glamour.” Lips pursed tight, she pushed through the door her father had told her he’d leave open. “Jeffrey’s in the study. He said the body’s in the upstairs apartment.” An apartment she’d always assumed was used as an extension of her father’s office.
They went straight up. It was as she was about to push open the door that she remembered Geraldine. Pale skin, perfect suit, vampire scent laced into her perfume. “Hell.” She walked through.
There was no one in the living room. Crossing the carpet only after making certain she wouldn’t be trampling evidence that could lead to Uram, she followed the scent to the doorway of what proved to be a bedroom. The woman lay exactly as Jeffrey had described. It was as if someone had started to perform an autopsy and been interrupted midway. Her chest was cracked open to display her insides, flaps of skin hanging off her rib cage.
But that wasn’t what held Elena frozen on the doorstep.
It wasn’t Geraldine. This woman had skin dusted with the gold of a tropical clime and hair a pale, pale blonde. Fine bones, a length that would equal height on the short side of average, lips that had smiled easily in life. Her fists clenched. “It was definitely Uram.” A truth forced out through gritted teeth. “I’ll follow the scent.”
She was about to push past Raphael when he caught her arm. “Don’t take foolish chances because you’re angry at your father.”
“I’m not angry.” Her emotions were a chaotic stew she couldn’t understand. “She looks like my mother,” she blurted out. A faded copy, a pale imitation. But nothing like the wintery elegance of Jeffrey’s new wife, Gwendolyn.
“She was his mistress.”
“You knew?” Of course he’d known—the Cadre of Ten wouldn’t trust anyone it hadn’t investigated inside out. “Never mind. My father isn’t the issue—Uram’s starting to hunt me and mine. He’s baiting us.”
Releasing her, Raphael walked into the room. “Your father said she was warm to the touch when he arrived?”
She nodded in a jerky motion, feeling as if everything in her body was out of sync. “He checked for a pulse.” God alone knew why. “Means Uram hasn’t been up and around long. Probably a couple of hours at most.”
“I don’t believe he took blood from her. There are no marks but the ones that caused her death.”
“He’s probably still glutted.” She couldn’t believe she sounded so normal when she was on the verge of screaming. Jeffrey had forbidden her and Beth from even talking about Marguerite after her death, yet he’d kept this woman, this shadow of her mother, with him. But Jeffrey’s hypocrisy wasn’t the fault of this poor, brutalized stranger—she deserved to have her killer brought to whatever justice the Cadre meted out to its own.
“Glutted,” she repeated, forcefully corralling her skittering thoughts, “but not stupid.” Uram was beginning to act more like a thinking being. “Most vamps caught in bloodlust don’t reach that stage until at least three or four months after the bloodlust first sets in. The only one who’s known to have survived that lo
ng after turning was—” The name stuck in her throat, a vicious, cutting evil.
“Slater Patalis,” Raphael completed for her. “Venom’s arrived to complete the cleanup. I’ll fly above. I’ve asked Dmitri to stay out of range.”
“Good.” She turned away, unable to look at the woman on the bed. “What about my father?”
“He knows only that his lover was killed by a rogue vampire. That’s a rumor it’s to our advantage to spread.”
Venom’s scent curled up the stairs as they headed down. “The woman has family,” the vampire said. “No one in the city, however.”
Elena had a sudden, choking thought. “Did she have children?” A brother or a sister she’d never known about?
It was Raphael who answered. “No. I’m certain.”
She gave a jerky nod at the firm answer, and he turned back to Venom. “Her body can’t be found.”
“Of course. I’ll ensure there’s a paper trail leading out of the city.” The vampire began to climb up. “Jason has returned.”
Having reached the hallway, Elena fought the urge to go to her father’s study, knowing it would only end in another shouting match. “Who’s Jason?” she asked instead, focusing on filtering out Venom’s scent and drawing a bead on Uram’s.
“One of the Seven.”
The Angel of Blood had gone out the back door, she thought, heading that way. “Why are you getting rid of the body? She was torn up, but it looks like classic vampire overkill.”
“Uram may have left traces on her.”
She pulled open the back door, felt a stickiness on her palm, and looked down. Rust stained her skin. Dried blood. “He’s taunting us.” She rubbed her palm clean against her pants, wanting to wash it off, but not enough to chance losing the scent. It was fresh, clean, vivid in the clarity of the day after a rainstorm. That was a bonus—with so much having been washed away, the new scents were richer, more intense.
Blood drops a few feet from the door. She didn’t want to consider where they’d come from, not when taking souvenirs was Uram’s thing. Which reminded her—“Michaela?”
“I’ve warned her.”
Almost able to see Uram’s scent in the ozone-lashed air, she began running, barely aware of the wind generated by Raphael’s wings as he rose to the sky. A group of early commuters got out of her way as she almost sprinted out of the alley behind the building and into the busier street on the other side, but no one looked skyward. Glamour, she thought. It made her skin creep to think Uram could’ve been watching her at any time since the hunt began.
Another drop of blood, this one buried into the asphalt by the pounding of feet rushing this way and that as the city woke. She noted it but kept running, dodging well-dressed businessmen and shopping-cart-pushing homeless with equal ease. More blood, this drop large enough to have people circling it with wary looks. She wondered if anyone had called the cops. It being New York, she expected not.
Raphael would need to send a cleanup crew here, too. Mentally tagging the spot, she continued to follow the scent, excitement lacing her blood like the most powerful of drugs. Her ability infused every inch of her skin, every element of her being.
This was who she was. Hunter-born.
She felt like she was swimming through acid burned in sunlight by the time she found herself in front of a building that looked surprisingly familiar. Where was she? She blinked awake out of the almost trancelike state she’d fallen into and read the sign.
The NEW Children’s Museum
ENDOWED BY DeverauX Enterprises
Her blood chilled, horror flooding her mouth, until she read the fine print and realized the museum was closed due to refurbishment. Thank God. If some child had gone inside . . .
Is he in the building?
It was tempting to wrap the scent of rain, of Raphael, around herself, but she resisted, tugging on the echoes of Uram’s trail instead. “Either that or we just missed him.” Wondering if Uram had broken in, she checked the door and found it locked. Her brow furrowed as she concentrated. “The scent’s not that strong by the door.”
She took several steps back and turned in a slow circle. There! Squeezing around the side of the building, she made her way to the back, fear, anger, and the thrill of the hunt thrumming in her blood. The parking lot was empty but that wasn’t what held her interest. A small door at the back lay open, swinging gently to and fro in the light breeze.
Heart in her throat, she followed the scent and entered. She didn’t have to go far.
Geraldine lay in a crumpled heap by the doorway, as if she’d been dumped in a hurry. Sensing life, Elena went down on her haunches and—“Oh, Jesus!” Geraldine’s throat was slashed, but she was conscious, her eyes full of terror. Elena didn’t know how the hell she was still alive.
“Hold on.” She fumbled with her cell phone. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
“Don’t.” Raphael’s shadow filled the doorway, blocking all light. “I’ll have Illium take her to a healer. He’s almost here.”
She met his eyes, knew she didn’t have time to argue. “Fine.” Her tone asked for a promise the other woman wouldn’t be harmed.
“We’ll have to remove her memories.” Unsaid were the words, if she lives.
Geraldine coughed as Raphael gathered her up in his arms. “V-vam—” It was more air than sound, her hand clamped tight around her neck, but Elena understood. Not an accusation—a request. Before she could say anything, however, Raphael was gone.
Elena drew in the scents around her and realized this was as far inside as Uram had come. Stepping back out into the parking lot, she circled out from the museum, trying to find another marker. Nothing. The bastard had dumped Geraldine and flown when Elena and Raphael had gotten too close. She was back at the museum by the time Raphael returned. “Your cleanup crew will have to work overtime today.”
“It’s necessary.”
“Fly me to Michaela’s.”
“You sound very sure he’ll head that way.”
“Geraldine was wearing a diamond ring when I met her yesterday. It was missing today, and from the white band of skin on her finger, I don’t think she ever took it off.”
“It’ll be easier if I carry you.” Seeing the sense in that, she nodded and Raphael picked her up, one arm around her back, the other under her knees. Glamour spread like water across her skin.
“Did you do it?” she asked as he rose, holding on tight and keeping her eyes closed against the mind-bending sight of her bones disappearing into thin air. “Start the process of turning Geraldine into a vampire?”
“No.”
“Why not? She probably won’t survive otherwise. And she’d be happy to be one. A win-win situation.” Wind laced with the whispered promise of more rain whipped through her hair, stroked her cheeks.
“You’re asking for forbidden knowledge again.”
“You put me in the path of a monster—not just me, but people even peripherally related to me—” Panic hit her. “Sara, my sister!”
“We’ve alerted everyone close to you that they might be targeted by a vampire.”
She gripped him harder. “Won’t do much good against an archangel, will it?”
“No. The only thing that’ll stop him is death.”
“How will you kill him?”
“Rip out his heart and shove my power through the hole in his torso, tearing him apart from the inside out.”
She swallowed at the graphic description. “Can he do the same to you?”
“He is an archangel.”
In other words, yes. Fear clawed at her heart, fear for a being who’d lived more lifetimes than she could imagine. “Why can an archangel only be killed by another archangel?”
“As we age, we gain power—including the power to end the life of an immortal.” And perhaps, Raphael thought, recalling Lijuan’s coy hints, the power to give life, too. But not a life that was anything close to what life should be. “It’s one of the prerequisites of being in
the Cadre of Ten. We must be able to destroy each other if the need arises.”
“And that’s not too much information?”
“You would’ve guessed.” Her intelligence was strong, stubborn, relentless. In all his centuries of living, he’d never met a warrior who challenged him as she did. “The female we found, who is she?”
“Geraldine, my father’s secretary.”
“Your father employs a lover of vampires?”
“What, you didn’t know?” She snorted. “I thought you knew every minute detail of my history.”
“Assistants weren’t of much interest.”
“Yeah, well, Jeffrey doesn’t know about her extracurricular activities.”
“Illium said he’s seen her at Erotique. She dances.” Erotique was a by-invitation-only club that catered to upscale vampires who wanted to relax in the company of humans who’d been tutored as to what was acceptable and what was not.
“I’ve heard the dancers of Erotique described as the geishas of the West.”
Raphael caught the edge in that question, wondered at it. “An apt comparison.”
Her nails dug into his neck. “More like they know how to pander to men who can’t be bothered to make an effort.”
“Both male and female vampires frequent Erotique.” He paused. “It holds less allure for angels.”
Those nails withdrew slightly. “Those dancers—they make good money?”
Raphael made contact with Illium and found the answer. “Yes.”
“So what was Geraldine doing moonlighting as Jeffrey’s assistant? I guess we’ll take out the thumbscrews if she lives.”
“Unnecessary. In all probability she was a spy for a competitor with fangs.”
“Why was Bluebell at Erotique anyway?”
“He has a fascination with mortals.” Illium’s Flaw had caused Illium’s Fall. It was a lesson taught to all young angels.
“What if he falls in love again? What then?”
“As long as he keeps our secrets, he may love his mortal.”
“Except that she’ll die in a few decades, while he’ll live for centuries.”
