by Nalini Singh
The vampire frowned. “Are you certain the message was from Neha? I saw her flying down toward the city not long ago.”
“Yes. We are to meet at the ruined temple just outside the walls of the fort.” Still, uneasy with the unexpected choice of venue, she reached into a hidden pocket in her tunic to retrieve the small card. “It is her hand.”
Taking the card, Venom rubbed his thumb over the script. “Yes, you’re right. But her writing’s not so ornate as to be impossible to forge. I don’t like the feel of this.”
All at once, she knew why Venom had come to the palace, and her heart twisted. “Jason told you to watch over me.” It did something to her to know that Jason cared enough about her to have asked another of the Seven to keep her in his sights. No one had watched over her since she left the Refuge and the protection of those who undertook the welfare of angelic young. She was not so proud as to refute the emotions his care engendered in her.
Venom gave her a faint smile in answer. “It says you have fifteen minutes till your meeting.”
“I thought to arrive early.” Give myself room to settle so that nothing Neha does will goad me into a fatal mistake.
“Indulge me,” Venom said, “and arrive exactly on time.”
Glancing up, she raised a hand and plucked his sunglasses off his face before he realized her intent. The way he moved away from her was a sinuous, beautiful, fast thing, but she held her position. “You had only to ask,” he said, pushing back disordered strands of hair as he rose from his combat-ready crouch, his green eyes vivid and hypnotic against the desert brown of his skin, warm and of this land.
“I thought to read your eyes.” Mahiya handed back his sunglasses, a faint niggling at the back of her mind. “But that was foolish,” she said, the odd sense that she was missing something gone before she could pursue it. “I do not know anyone who might read such eyes.”
Sliding the shades back on, Venom began to walk away from her. “Remember, arrive exactly on time.” Then he picked up his pace and was gone in a quicksilver snap of movement that was nothing human.
Yet no matter how fast he was, he could not make it to Guardian before she did. Even so, she flew up to the palace roof to wait, having decided to give him the time he’d asked for, her sense of “wrongness” amplifying the more she thought about the situation. But not attending the meet wasn’t an option, not when it had most likely been Neha who’d sent the note—the archangel knew Mahiya had a sickening fear of Guardian . . . and she knew why.
Please no! Please!
It was the only time she had ever begged. It was also the only time she’d seen an expression of horror on Neha’s face, as if she could not believe her own actions. It hadn’t stopped her though . . . and Anoushka had been standing beside her all the while, her mother’s cold-eyed shadow.
Only two minutes to go till the meeting.
Spreading out her wings, she swept off the roof and up into the clouds, angling toward the ruined temple. In this, Neha had erred. Though Guardian made Mahiya’s skin sticky with fear sweat, the temple held only happy memories.
Those memories a talisman, she swept over Guardian and its sentries. Some distance from the fort’s protective walls to the south lay the crumbling ruins of a temple that had been built long ago to honor the archangel who had ruled here before Neha. Neha wasn’t responsible for the destruction. It had simply fallen out of use some years after the archangel in question had been killed in a battle against another of the Cadre.
While one entire side had collapsed, the roof having crashed onto the paving stones below, the other half was more or less upright. Ten sturdy columns held up the remainder of the roof, the holes in it scattering sunshine over the floor below to create a mosaic of light and shadow.
Landing outside the temple, Mahiya took a deep breath of the thinner mountain air and folded her wings . . . just as a step sounded behind her. She twisted on her feet to find herself face-to-face with a Venom whose skin gleamed with sweat, his formerly pristine white shirt now damp and molding itself to sleek muscle, his unshielded eyes narrowed against the sunlight.
Astonished, she stared. “No one’s that fast.”
A flash of fang as he grinned. “I beg to disagree.”
Brain kicking into gear, she looked beyond him to the flat walls of the fort, snapped her head back. “You know the tunnels.” From what little information she’d been able to scrape up, the subterranean passages that connected the two forts had been built up over millennia, had to be a maze.
“Maybe.” Brushing past her with a speed that was in no way human, he ran up the temple steps.
“Venom!” She stepped into the dappled light of the temple on his heels . . . and was overwhelmed by a sense of peace. This had been her favorite playground when she’d been a child angel on visits home from the Refuge. She’d had a thousand adventures within its broken, tumbled-down walls, written her name with a charcoal stick on one of the columns before guilt made her return to rub it out.
The memory had her lips kicking up at the corners even as she searched for any sign of Neha and found none. However, Venom stood not far in front of her, checking a shadowed alcove. “You have to step out before you make yourself a target.” Neha would not tolerate the fact that Mahiya was being escorted by a vampire who remained something of a favorite, regardless of his choice to serve Raphael. “You can easily keep watch from a concealed position.” His help would be welcome should her sense of wrongness not be her imagination running riot.
“Hmm? No, I don’t think so.”
“I’ll drag you out if I have to.” He was Jason’s friend, and Jason, she knew instinctively, was a man with few friends. Venom couldn’t be allowed to throw his life away.
Venom’s response was low voiced. “Come look at this, Mahiya.”
25
Caught by the odd tone of his voice, she crossed through a beam of sunlight and came to a dead halt. Within the alcove in front of Venom sat a box wrapped in sparkling gold paper tied with a silver bow. When the vampire gingerly slid out the card tucked in under the silver ribbon, it proved to contain nothing but her name in the same script as that on the note commanding her to be here at this time.
“I may not be a spymaster like our Jason,” Venom mused, “but I would hazard Neha did not send that note.”
Mahiya had to agree, her mind trying to make sense of the bizarre circumstances and failing. “Let’s take the box outside before we open it.”
“You shouldn’t open it at all until Jason and I have a chance to—”
“As a strong vampire, your hearing is acute,” she interrupted. “Do you hear ticking? Anything to indicate it may contain an incendiary device?” If an explosion hit either of them right, it could decapitate and kill.
Venom angled his head, finally gave a reluctant shake. “No. But—”
“And, there is a high chance you have an excellent sense of smell.” She’d seen him “taste” the air with his tongue. “Smell anything suspicious?” The fact was, she knew if she walked away now, either Venom or Jason would take the risk. And that, she refused to allow. “Chemicals, anything?”
Gritted teeth. “No.”
“I don’t, either, and if this is the murderer,” she said reasonably, “he or she has no reason to play such games.” An angel strong enough to annihilate Arav could break her in half. “Someone else could have stumbled upon this—a guard on a break, a curious child—and none of the murders so far appear to have been random.” The latter was arguable, but her gut said there was a connection between the four victims, and she knew Jason agreed.
The slitted black pupils of Venom’s eyes narrowed as he considered her. “I thought you were a princess.”
“You should know that an archangel’s court is far more dangerous than the streets of New York.” She picked up the box before he could and took it, very carefully, into the sunshine. Making her way around to the side totally hidden from Guardian, she placed the box on a clear patch of gras
s a good fifty feet from the temple, on the theory that she didn’t want the walls collapsing on top of her. “Go stand in the distance.”
A raised eyebrow. “I think not.”
“Don’t be foolish,” she said, deciding she liked Venom not only because he was Jason’s friend, but because he looked at her as if she were the dangerous creature. “If something does happen to me, you’ll be unaffected and able to summon help. Or would you rather be injured at the same time?”
His lips curved. “That logic holds if I’m the one to open the box.”
“True—but I have a higher chance of survival.”
“I doubt it.” He folded his arms. “You might be an angel, but I’m stronger than you are. And Jason is stronger than both of us.”
Yes, and I will not have him hurt, no matter if that is a silly emotional decision. “So you’d wait for him?” When he didn’t reply, she said, “Yes, that’s what I thought. This box was meant for me, Venom. I’ll allow no one else to open it”—to be hurt—“and you can’t follow me in to the sky should I take off with it. Wouldn’t you rather I stay here?”
Another hard stare. “Obviously, I need to study princesses further.” With that, he turned on his heel and jogged to crouch behind a large rock.
Going to her knees, she undid the ribbon after examining it for hidden wires, realizing as she did so that the box wasn’t wrapped in gold foil—the cardboard was actually painted the metallic shade, so once she had the ribbon off, all she had to do was lift the lid. “Venom! Do you see any branches nearby?” There was a tree not far from him.
“Wait.” A minute later, he threw over a sturdy branch at least four feet long. “I’m happy to know you’re not suicidal.”
No, I plan to live, to love, to fly . . . and if he’ll let me, dance again with a spymaster with wings of jet. “Here I go.” Flattening her body to the ground to ameliorate the impact of any blast, she reached out with the stick and flicked the lid off.
Nothing happened.
Blowing out a trembling breath, she got up and padded closer, aware of Venom jogging across to join her. Both of them stared at what lay within the box before Venom crouched down. “Nothing smells off.” He held up a hand when she would’ve reached for the object. “Wait, let me make sure it’s not sitting on something.”
Mahiya waited, patient, until he nodded at her to go ahead.
“Seems you have a secret admirer,” he murmured as she examined the fluffy pink teddy bear with white paws and face. “Maybe I scared him off.”
“Perhaps.” She searched the whole toy, but could find no hidden compartment. “I admit this is so strange a thing I have no idea what to make of it. Maybe Jason will.”
“If I might suggest that I carry it down.”
“Yes, it’s better if I’m not seen with it. If you are, it’ll be assumed you’re courting a lover.”
“I have a reputation, it seems.” A statement smooth as silk, but for the bite of it.
“I’d have to be blind not to notice your sensuality.” Dangerous and languid at the same time. “I’m fairly certain you don’t ever have to go to an empty bed unless you choose it.” Regardless of the eerie “otherness” of his eyes.
“Careful”—taking the box and its cargo, he rose, the movement liquid with grace—“you’ll make Jason jealous.”
“Do not let this crush you, but you aren’t my type.” Though she framed it as a joke, the fact was, she saw Neha too deeply in Venom. His eyes were of her creatures, his movements the same—and that was why she said what she did next, for she refused to allow Neha to spoil the friendships she might make. “I do think we’ll be wonderful friends.”
A single raised eyebrow, sophisticated cool in his next words. “We will?”
“Of course. Admit it, you already rather like me even if I did win our argument.”
A faint twitch of Venom’s lips. “When I first met you, I couldn’t understand the attraction, but I do believe Jason has met his match.”
It took effort to keep her tone steady. “I’m going into the city for a short time. I’ll see you when I return to the fort.” It was a fuzzy memory at best, from over two years ago, but if she was right, there was a slim chance it might provide them with an answer of some kind.
Venom scowled. “Jason gave me strict orders to keep you safe.”
Her heart hitched at the direct confirmation of her guess. Some women might have chafed at the protectiveness, but for Mahiya, who had never mattered much to anyone, such a thing was no unwanted chain, but a welcome indication of care. That didn’t mean she intended to stop thinking for herself. “It’s daylight,” she said, “I don’t plan to linger in any dark alleys and will in fact be in a busy market district.”
“Some princess,” Venom muttered, but dug in his pocket to retrieve a cell phone. “This is a spare. I’m inputting my number and Jason’s. Call if you have any problems.”
A few minutes later, she swept down over the city. Her target was a sunny yellow building with an old but gleaming treadle sewing machine in the window and a dusty child in short pants playing on the doorstep.
His eyes widened at the sight of Mahiya. He was off like a shot the next instant, running into the house yelling, “Ma! Ma!”
Making no effort to hide her smile, Mahiya waited politely on the street, aware of other shopkeepers poking their heads out of small storefronts and/or workshops, and of customers congregating on doorsteps across the narrow lane. Six or seven shops down, a camel chewed cud, while his owner fiddled with a saddle that bore little silver bells and pretended not to watch Mahiya.
Angels filled the skies of this city, but an angel in this street of the market district was a rare thing. It wasn’t snobbery that kept her kind away, for angels were as curious as mortals when it came to exploring a city’s hidden byways. It was because the shops here were tiny, with no room for wings. The only reason Mahiya even knew about this particular one was that the owner had been invited to showcase her goods at the fort in a trade exhibition.
Now, the young mortal appeared in the doorway. Of course, Mahiya thought, youth was a relative thing. This woman who had lived but twenty-seven, perhaps twenty-eight years, was old enough to have a little boy hiding behind her skirts. At the same age, Mahiya had been a babe not much bigger than the boy.
“My lady.” The toymaker bowed, her hands fisting in her apron. “I would welcome you inside but . . .”
“The intent is enough,” Mahiya said with utmost gentleness in the informal local dialect. “I will not disturb you long.”
“Please, let me bring you a cup of tea at least.” Entreaty in eyes of melted chocolate. “I cannot send an angel from my doorstep without courtesy.”
“Thank you. Tea would be welcome.”
A shaky smile lit up the woman’s face. “I have a pot on the stove. A minute, no more.” As she turned to go, the little boy found the courage to stay behind, eyes of the same melted chocolate as his mother gazing at Mahiya in wonder.
“Hello,” Mahiya said, and since he didn’t bolt, asked, “Why are you not at school?”
His eyes became even rounder, and he sucked his thumb into his mouth. When she didn’t say anything further, he withdrew that thumb with slow carefulness, as if not trusting her silence. “I’m not as big as Nishi yet.” A pause, then he added, “Nishi goes to school,” as if to make sure she understood.
“Ah,” she said. “Will you be old enough soon?”
Lines on his forehead. “Not too soon. Maybe almost soon.”
Biting back her smile at his flawless childish logic, she saw his eyes go to her wings. “You may come closer if you wish.”
Thumb in his mouth again, he padded out to stand only inches from her, examining her feathers with the frankness of the very young. When his mother appeared in the doorway, cup in hand, she went to call him back, but Mahiya shook her head. Accepting the tea, she said, “He is smart and brave both.”
“Yes.” The proud woman beamed, her thin f
ace beautiful. “Takes after his father.”
Only then did Mahiya ask her question. “I saw someone with a toy bear—pink and white, with an embroidered collar—”
“Of white daisies.” Quickening excitement.
“Yes, exactly. I thought it may have been your work.” Hand sewn and embroidered, the eyes a lovely blue crystal, and the stitch work exquisite.
“Do you remember if it had a tiny yellow star on the left foot?”
Mahiya thought back. “Yes.”
“Then it is mine for certain. But I’m sorry, my lady, I don’t have another.”
“Oh, that’s a pity. Do you keep many?”
“No, only one of each kind.” The woman smoothed her hands down her apron. “I sold Daisy a week ago. Oh, let me take your cup.”
“Thank you. The tea was delicious.” Rich, milky, flavored with cardamom and sweetened with honey. “Do you remember to whom you sold Daisy? I may see if they are willing to sell it to me.”
“A vampire. Unfamiliar, perhaps a guest at the fort.” The woman bit her lip, shook her head. “He gave no name, but his hair was scarlet, his skin like fine bone china.”
“A difficult man to miss.” Yet she knew of no vampire with such hair and skin in the vicinity.
Another mystery.
* * *
Jason had spent the morning collecting information from quarters closed to others, and now landed in a farmer’s fallow field, heading to the shade cast by a hut likely used as a resting place during the planting season. He needed the whispering silence to think, to put all the pieces together.
The fact was, though he’d said nothing to either Venom or Mahiya, he had the amorphous feeling that Mahiya was the key. But while she’d had relationships of some kind with both Eris and Arav, nothing significant connected her to either Audrey or Shabnam. Yet, his instincts persisted—as if he’d seen or heard something he hadn’t consciously understood.
Frustrated, he took out his phone, deciding to pursue the answer to another question.
