Archangel's Blade

by Nalini Singh

  The flesh had begun to decompose, maggots crawling in several of the pieces. "Not refrigerated, even though it appears as if the body was dismembered soon after death," she said. "If this dump was planned--and it had to have been, for so many pieces to have been left here at one time--I'd have expected the murderer or murderers to have taken better care of the body."

  "Why?" Rising to his feet, Dmitri stripped off and disposed of the gloves he'd grabbed from one of the cops. "The whole point was to create a show. I'm fairly certain hunks of human meat crawling with maggots had the right impact."

  He was right. It wasn't hard to guess that the scent of decomposition had been critical to the early discovery of the remains--and that spoke not of rampant madness but of a sly kind of intelligence. "I'd like to know if the pathologist finds any other markings." The more text she had to work with, the easier the decoding process.

  "I'll arrange it." He took out a cell phone. "Do you want the skin or will photographs do?"

  Such a beautiful male. Such a pitiless question.

  "Photographs will do for now," she said, wondering if he was capable of the raw depths of human emotion any longer, this creature formed for seduction and honed in blood, "but they should preserve the skin if possible."

  "It'll be done."

  Not long afterward, he drove her to the Academy. "Your quarters are here?"

  She shook her head. "I moved out this morning." Another step out of the pit, another "fuck you" to the bastards who had hurt her.

  Dmitri's smile was slow, dangerous. "Good."

  Her hindbrain screamed a warning even as her abdomen clenched in visceral sensual awareness. "The building has security."

  He raised an eyebrow.

  Yeah, she didn't think that would stop him either.

  Getting out, she took in the picture he made in that car, a gorgeous, sexy creature, his skin kissed to warm perfection by the sun, the stunning blue of his shirt an exotic contrast. "You look like some rich playboy." If said playboys were sharks.

  "And?"

  "And playboys prefer the glossy model type, in bed and out. It's a rule."

  "While you're in the library, look up a painting titled Asleep by Gadriel," he said, slipping on a pair of sunglasses. "That's my idea of the perfect woman."

  Of course it was the first thing she did--and felt an electric current of wicked heat singe her blood when the computer screen filled with the nude image of a couple asleep in bed, the man on his back, the woman lying on top of him, his hand fisted in her abundant ebony hair. There were tangled sheets aplenty, but none covered the woman's honey-colored skin. Her heavy breasts were crushed against the man's chest, his free hand lying proprietarily on her lush bottom, her body all curves and softness.

  But for the lack of muscle that underlay every hunter's form, it could've been a painting of Honor.

  Returning to the Tower with his mind full of images of what Honor would look like in place of Gadriel's model, Dmitri headed up to his office. "What have you got?" he asked Venom when the vampire returned from his duties overseeing the removal and transportation of the body parts. His question, however, had nothing to do with the morning's find.

  "The vampires who took Honor were clever," Venom answered, removing his sunglasses to reveal eyes no human would ever, ever possess. "They used weaker, younger vamps to do the dirty work, and it was those vamps the hunters cornered when they went in."

  Dmitri knew the two survivors had been shot and sliced all to hell but left alive. However, according to the vampire who'd had charge of the case till now, neither had provided any information of value. The mastermind behind the kidnapping had kept them scrupulously out of the loop.

  Dmitri decided he needed to pay them a personal visit. This was his hunt now. "Keep on it."

  His private line rang just as Venom left. Answering, he found himself talking to Dahariel, Astaad's second. "What news of Caliane?" the angel asked.

  The query wasn't unusual, given the fact that the oldest of the archangels was allowing only Raphael and those he called his own through the shield around the newly risen city of Amanat. "Concerned with helping her people make the transition from sleep to wakefulness." Those people, mortals and--it had been discovered--a number of immortals, had slept more than a millennium beside their goddess in a city of stone gray now sparkling under the light of a foreign sun.

  From what Raphael had told him in their last conversation, the residents of Amanat were content to re-create and live in the time in which they had gone to sleep, filling the gardens with blooms, the fountains with water. They would not hear of modern things, had no curiosity to explore a mountainous new homeland far from the place where they had last walked.

  "She holds them in thrall," Raphael had said of his mother. "But she did not sing them to it--their devotion is true."

  "Does she wish for more territory?" Dahariel asked in a tone some would call emotionless, but that Dmitri recognized as icily practical.

  "No. Land, it seems, has never been the source of Caliane's madness." The archangel had sung the adult populations of two bustling cities into the sea in order to protect the world from war, creating "a silence so deep, it echoed across eternity"--words Jessamy had written in her histories of Caliane's reign.

  "I spoke to Jessamy," Dahariel said in an uncanny echo. "There has never been an awakening such as this."

  And so no one knew the rules of engagement. "We're immortals, Dahariel. Time isn't our enemy." Better to wait, to learn the truth of Caliane's sanity or lack thereof before preparing for a war that would drench the world in blood, turn the rivers red, make the sea a silent graveyard. "How's Michaela?" Astaad's second was the archangel Michaela's lover, a clash of loyalties that made Dmitri wonder exactly who Dahariel served.

  "Some women," Dahariel said in that same hard tone devoid of any hint of humanity, "get under a man's skin until digging them out makes you bleed."

  Hanging up, Dmitri wondered at the undertone of violence in Dahariel's statement. Dmitri knew about loving a woman, but he'd never wanted to rip Ingrede from his heart, no matter the associated pain. Favashi hadn't ever made a place for herself that deep. And Honor . . . yes, she was getting under his skin, but it was a compulsion that would end when he took her to bed, had her naked and writhing beneath him.

  But first he would fulfill his promise, lay the screaming, bloodied remains of her abusers at her feet. Vengeance, as he'd told her, could taste sweet indeed.

  "I will give you your freedom, never look your way again." Attempting to be regal even when her eyes fell on the blade in his hand. "Wealth beyond imagining, it'll be yours."

  What he wanted, Isis could never return to him. "The only thing I desire," he whispered, touching the tip of his blade to the skin above her heart, "is to hear you beg for your life. So beg."

  The knife slid home.

  It was just past eight, the world swathed in cool darkness, when, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a long black coat he'd had for years, he turned into the Angel Enclave estate held by the angel Andreas. Andreas had been given charge over the interrogation and punishment of the vampires Honor's rescuers had left alive.

  "Dmitri." Andreas's wings--a dark amber streaked with gray--flared behind him as he greeted Dmitri in front of a home that was all glass and hard angles, unusual for an older angel. "Why the sudden interest in these two?"

  Because it was personal now. "We'll talk after I've spoken to them."

  The aristocratic lines of Andreas's face didn't shift into an expression of affront. The angel was powerful, but Dmitri was more so. The only reason Dmitri didn't rule a territory was because he preferred to work in the Tower . . . and in the shadows. His position as Raphael's second had never been boring yet.

  In what he thought of as his "adolescence," angry and full of a helpless pain, he'd once left to work for Neha. The Archangel of India hadn't been pleased at his decision to return to what had been the beginnings of Raphael's first Tower the minute he completed
the term he'd agreed to serve in her court. But then she had smiled.

  "So wild, both of you." A shake of her head, those deep brown eyes holding the amusement of an archangel who had lived millennia. "Of course you find my court too genteel for your taste. Go, then, Dmitri, but should you wish for civilized company, this court's doors will always be open to you."

  Neha had been a gracious queen then, with her consort, Eris, at her side and laughter in her eyes at what she considered the folly of youth. Now Eris hadn't been seen for hundreds of years and her daughter Anoushka's execution had turned the Queen of Snakes, of Poisons, into a cold-blooded creature akin to those she kept as pets.

  "This way." Andreas swept out before him.

  As they passed through the wide-open central core of the house, Dmitri saw a handsome if slender man of Asian descent working at a small desk in the corner. His eyes narrowed. "Is that Harrison Ling?"

  Andreas stopped. "Yes. You know him?"

  "He's Elena's brother-in-law." The fool had attempted to escape his Contract, been dragged home by Elena herself. Dmitri doubted Harrison had any idea of just how big a favor she'd done him--Andreas wasn't known for his mercy toward those who broke their Contracts. The longer Harrison had remained amongst the missing, the worse the price he'd have had to pay.

  "Harrison," Andreas said with an echoing darkness in his voice, "has done very well in learning the meaning of loyalty."

  The male looked up at that instant and the fear that crawled, oily and slick, behind his eyes was a slithering thing. Dmitri felt no sympathy for him. Unlike Dmitri, Harrison had chosen to become a vampire--and he'd made that choice not knowing whether the woman he professed to love would be able to follow. As it turned out, Beth, Elena's sister and Harrison's wife, was incompatible with the toxin that turned human into vampire; she would die, while Harrison remained forever young.

  "The prisoners," he said, dismissing the pathetic male from his mind.

  Andreas led him outside and to a small grove of evergreens behind his home. The naked creatures hanging from the branches of two separate trees keened in terror the instant they heard the rustle of angelic wings.

  Holly . . . Sorrow had the same primitive reaction. She might mouth off to Dmitri, try to play power games that gave her an illusion of control, but put her in a room with an angel and she went close to catatonic. She refused to talk about what Uram had done to her, but Dmitri had seen the carnage in the warehouse, the torn limbs and blood-slick floors, the gaping mouths full of organs plump and wet, the staring, blind eyes.

  "Do they still have their tongues?" he asked Andreas, noticing the fact that both men had been turned into eunuchs, their penises and testicles removed with what appeared to have been dull blades. They were vampires. The parts would grow back--which was when Andreas would order their removal once more. Without anesthetic.

  "I was planning to have them cut out again tomorrow."

  Dmitri felt no disgust at the brutality of the ongoing punishment, not when he had an excellent idea of the horrors these males had inflicted on Honor for their sexual gratification. "Leave it for now. I might need to question them again."

  Andreas inclined his head. "Do you wish for privacy?"

  "Yes."

  Waiting until the angel disappeared through the trees, he prowled to the vampire closest to him. "So," he murmured, "you enjoy taking what is not yours by force?"

  8

  The male's keening turned into wild panic as he recognized Dmitri's voice. Since he was missing his eyes, his eye sockets huge black holes in his face, sound was the only thing left to him. "I don't know anything! I would tell you if I did!"

  Dmitri believed him--the vampire was weak, would have broken at the first sign of pain. But there was a chance he'd glimpsed something without knowing it. "Tell me everything," he said, speaking to them both. "From the first instant you were approached. If it proves useful, perhaps I won't take over your punishment."

  Terror turned them incoherent for several minutes. He simply waited it out. Cold of heart, Favashi had once called him. But since she was a bitch who had wanted only to use him, her words held no power. Still, the accusation was true--his conscience rarely troubled him, and never when it came to retribution for those who had brutalized women or children.

  "Enough," he snapped when they continued to sob and plead.

  Silence, as they choked on their very breaths. Almost half a minute later, the one he'd first spoken to opened his mouth. "I was working as a private security guard when I got a call one day. Man on the other end said he'd seen me at a big party, liked the job I'd done, and did I want to earn some money on the side with an off-the-books gig."

  "Which party?"

  "He never said, but we mostly worked the premier events--wealthy vamps."

  That didn't give Dmitri anything new, but he'd put someone on rechecking the guest lists of the parties this male had worked. "And?"

  Jerking out a leg when something big and black landed on his exposed flesh, the vampire twitched violently. "It was so much money, I said s-sure." Swallowing. "Then I asked Reg if he'd like in since the client said he needed two people."

  Reg, a thin blond male, was still crying, but silently. "I wish to fucking hell I'd said no."

  Now he did, Dmitri thought. He'd had no problem with it when he'd torn into Honor's flesh, when he'd touched her in a way no man had the right to touch a woman without consent. Walking across to the blond, Dmitri backhanded him hard enough that something fractured with an audible crack. "Do you really think I give a shit?" he asked in a quiet, contained voice. "Now answer the question I asked."

  Spitting out a tooth, the vampire blubbered out the next series of words. "Leon had the contact. I just did what he said."

  Leon began to speak before Dmitri could remind the vampire why it wasn't a good idea to keep him waiting. "Always by phone." Gasped out. "Never had any face-to-face contact. Money was deposited into my account and I gave Reg his cut."

  Dmitri didn't say a word.

  "The client," Leon continued, stumbling over his own tongue, "said she was his girlfriend, that it was some stupid sex fantasy of hers to be snatched and . . ." Thudding heartbeat, twitching skin, as if he was chillingly conscious of what Dmitri would like to do to him. "He said it was her fantasy."

  Dmitri heard the quaver beneath the irritating whine. "What was your first clue that it wasn't?"

  Reg was the one who answered. "When she broke Leon's nose! I told him something was wrong, but he was pissed so he punched her, knocked her out."

  Dmitri spread his hand, his fingers flexing. "You're older, Reg. Why didn't you stop him?" he asked in a tone as soft as fresh-fallen snow.

  Reg began to retch.

  Dmitri said nothing until the spasms passed. Then he walked over to stroke his hand over the vampire's face. "Answer my question."

  Sweat trickling down his temples, the blond swallowed. "The money. I wanted the money."

  "Good." He patted the vampire's cheek, left him quivering as he walked over to Leon.

  Who was trying to break his wrists away from the rope in a futile effort to escape, a broken marionette. Reaching into the inside pocket of his coat, Dmitri removed a filleting knife, pressed the cold metal to the new pink skin in front of him. "Tell me the rest." He cut a deep line down the center of Leon's chest.

  Blood, dark and red, seeped out of the cut as the vampire whimpered. "We weren't supposed to damage her and I gave her a black eye. So we tied her up and left her where the directions said and got the hell out."

  "You didn't stay out." Another cut, this one horizontal, and deep enough that it brushed Leon's internal organs.

  But the other vampire kept talking, because he knew Dmitri could do far worse. "Seven weeks later, client calls me again, gives me an address, says maybe we'd like to join in the festivities."

  Twisting the blade, Dmitri pulled up, collapsing a lung. "Keep talking." Vampires of Leon's age didn't need to breathe . . . much.

/>   "We got there"--harsh, gasping attempts to take in air--"the place was empty except for the hunter, but it was clear more than one vampire had fed from her. Client left us a note to enjoy ourselves. Note's gone. I threw it away."

  Dmitri removed the knife. "And did you? Enjoy yourself?" They were rhetorical questions--these two had been found with Honor over a week later, their mouths smeared with her blood. "You invited your friends, too, didn't you?" The two vampires killed during the rescue had worked for the same security company. "Who else?"

  "No one," Leon answered. "I swear. Just the four of us."

  They were too terrified to lie, so Dmitri accepted that. "Good."

  The screaming stopped when he removed their voice boxes. But he left them alive. Raphael had told him something once, a long time ago. Something his mother, Caliane, had said.

  "Three days in the span of a mortal lifetime can feel like three decades."

  Raphael's mother might yet turn out to be an insane Ancient, but on this point, Dmitri agreed with her completely. So he would make sure Andreas knew not to let Reg and Leon die. As for the others . . . they would wish for death every single night for the next two centuries once he found them.

  Two months, after all, was a lot longer than three days.

  Nine at night, and Honor didn't know what she was doing here. "Sorry about canceling our other appointments. Thanks for coming in so late."

  Anastasia Reuben smiled, her steely gray hair pulled back in a neat bun. "I've worked with hunters for two decades, Honor. I know going to see a therapist is worse than getting your teeth pulled."

  She laughed, or tried to, the sound an awkward rasp. "So, how does this work?"

  "There's no pressure, no rules here," Dr. Reuben said, eyes gentle. "If all you want to do is talk about the latest episode of Hunter's Prey, then that's what we'll do."

  Honor had the feeling that wasn't a hypothetical example. "I came because . . ." Shaking her head, she jerked to her feet, adrenaline racing through every cell in her body. "I'm sorry to have wasted your time."