Archangel's Blade

by Nalini Singh

  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. "Shae," 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.

  "One of his friends," she said, "had called ahead to warn him that he was being hunted. He took out his rage on the villagers. The ground was sticky with blood when I arrived, the air so full of iron I could barely breathe. He'd butchered everyone--men, women, children, babies." A shake of her head. "That was the first time I understood that vampires were no longer human, even if they'd started out that way."

  Dmitri remembered the case. It hadn't been in Raphael's territory but in Elijah's, the archangel who ruled South America. "That vampire was found shot through the heart multiple times and staked to the ground with knives." He'd been a power, the second in one of the courts that reported to Elijah.

  "I didn't have a control chip," Honor said, referring to the weapon that immobilized vampires, "and he was on his way to another village when I tracked him down. Only way to stop him was to shred his heart and then, while he was down, pound so many knives into him that he couldn't pull them all out before help arrived." She rubbed her face. "I went through five clips--he kept reviving before I'd gotten enough knives into him, and then, afterward, when I thought he'd pull the blades out."

  "Beautiful and deadly," he murmured, bringing the car to a halt by the park where Sorrow waited. "I find that an intoxicating combination."

  Honor got out, falling into step beside him as he headed into the park. "Every other man I've seen since the assault has winced after mentioning something that might be considered an innuendo, and you continually say things like that."

  "Some people," Dmitri said, "survive. Others don't. You did." He knew because he knew what it was to stand in a place beyond desolation.

  Wild blue flickered through the web of leaves in front of them at that moment and Dmitri's priorities shifted. Stepping into the small clearing, he took in everything with a single glance. Illium, coming to land out of sight of Sorrow. The young woman herself sitting on an old tree stump with her arms locked tight around herself, her eyes diverted from the corpse on the grass in front of her.

  The male's fly was open, his genitals spilling out. His head rested at an angle that told Dmitri it had been broken with force, while his mouth was caught in an expression akin to that of a blowfish. "What happened?" he asked Sorrow, while Honor went to crouch beside the body.

  "I was walking"--rapid, staccato, as if she'd been hoarding her words--"and the next thing I remember, I'm standing here, watching his body slam to the ground." Her eyes, eyes that bespoke the man--the monster--who had Made her, met his. "I'm becoming like him. A butcher." The tang of her fear was unmistakable, but she held his gaze, this woman who had become Sorrow. "You have to do it, Dmitri." A whisper. "End me."

  15

  "Not yet." His eyes went to the man's exposed penis, shriveled and wizened in death. A normal man didn't walk around with his cock hanging out. But with Sorrow's memory a blank, there was no way to know if she'd enticed or mesmerized the human to come close enough that she could murder him, or if she had reacted in self-defense.

  That was when Honor rose to her feet, a grim smile on her face. "I thought I recognized him." She passed over her smart-phone.

  Taking it, Dmitri glanced at the newspaper article she'd pulled up about one Rick Hernandez, rapist out on parole. His mug shot had been printed as part of the paper's policy of alerting neighborhoods about violent offenders in their midst. A further scan of the article showed that the two women he'd been convicted of assaulting had both been small boned and of Asian descent.

  Handing Sorrow the phone, he watched as she began to shake. "I'll handle this." He put a hand on her hair and felt something fundamental in him break, reshape itself. "Venom will drive you home."

  "Venom isn't here," Honor said. "I am. Give me your car keys."

  "Sorrow isn't human."

  "The fact that she snapped the neck of a man twice her size was my first clue." Folded arms, but there was no aggression in those eyes full of mysteries. Instead, he saw a quiet strength and an inexplicable tenderness that twisted around his heart, barbed wire that made him bleed. "I'm armed and she's young."

  "Stay with her until Venom arrives." Dmitri threw her his keys.

  Instead of skirting around the other side of Sorrow's dead assailant, she walked close enough to him that the backs of their hands touched. It was the first time she'd made a conscious effort to touch him skin to skin.

  His body burned.

  The trip to Sorrow's house didn't take long. "Come on," she said to the young woman, who sat quiet and shaken, a doll with its strings cut. Honor saw herself in her, as she'd been before Sara's call . . . before Dmitri. The rough heat of his skin lingered on her own, and she wondered if he understood what it meant to her to know that her need to reach him was deeper than the scars left by her abduction. "Let's go in and have some tea."

  "I don't have any." A pause, the dull, glazed look lifting a fraction, as if she was fighting to break free of the shock. "I have coffee."

  "That'll do."

  Sorrow's movements continued to be jerky and uncoordinated as they walked into the house, where the woman who wasn't quite human began to make coffee with quick, jagged movements. "Uram," she said without warning. "I was one of his victims." Ground beans into the coffeemaker, water reservoir being filled. "He took us as we walked to the movies."

  According to the media, the archangel Uram had entered New York in an effort to take over Raphael's territory. But, if Honor was remembering it right, there had been a low-level hum of speculation that he'd had something to do with the string of disappearances that had taken place in the city around the same time. However, that speculation had died down the instant a more viable suspect was found. No one wanted to believe such madness of an archangel. "You were the sole survivor," she guessed.

  "Yes." A laugh as bitter
as the coffee dripping into the glass pot on the counter. "Though I'm not sure you'd call this surviving. I wasn't always Sorrow." The coffeemaker switched off on that haunting comment. Pouring out a cup, she slid it across to Honor before pouring one for herself. "I've never killed a man before."

  Honor took a sip of the hot liquid before answering, feeling eons older than this girl, though the actual age gap between them was probably closer to six or seven years. "It takes something from you," she said, because Sorrow didn't need lies, "something you never get back."

  The first person Honor had stabbed hadn't died, but the feel of her knife slicing into fat and flesh, the sharp scent of iron in the air, it was nothing she would ever forget. "But," she continued, "some people need to be killed." That man had intended to hurt her--she'd seen it in his yellowed smile the instant the social worker left.

  He'd had the nerve to call the cops afterward, screaming at them to arrest her. Except the chain-smoking detective had zeroed in on the fact that the "victim" had been stabbed at three a.m. in a young girl's bedroom. Sometimes, the system worked.

  A perfunctory knock at the door, then firm footsteps walking into the house--the vampire she had never seen without his sunglasses, dressed in another sleek black suit, this time with a shirt of gunmetal gray.

  "There you are, Sorrow." An almost gentle comment, with the finest razor-sharp edge of mockery. "Looks like I'm going to have to keep a closer eye on you."

  Sliding her gun back into her shoulder holster, Honor watched as he slid off the shades. Slitted and bright green, his eyes were those of a viper. "Okay," she said, not fighting the urge to stare, "that, I wasn't expecting." They had to be real, the reason for the sunglasses, but even knowing that, her brain had trouble processing the sight, it was so alien.

  A slow smile, his cinnamon-dark skin holding a warmth at odds with the eyes of a creature whose blood ran ice-cold. However, the words he directed at Sorrow were merciless. "Next time you slip your guard, I'll find you nice, comfortable accommodation in a cell somewhere. Or maybe a cage would work better."

  The young woman's mouth tightened. Then she threw her half-full cup of coffee at the vampire's head. "Go bite yourself, Venom."

  Dodging the missile with a reptilian burst of movement, the vampire hissed as the cup hit the wall and shattered, the coffee spraying out to splash his slick suit. At that instant, there was nothing human in him--only a predator on the hunt. Honor had her gun leveled at him before he rose from the crouch he'd fallen into after avoiding the cup. "Enough," she said, directing the statement to both of them. "Sorrow, clean up the mess. Venom, get out."

  The vampire, strands of black hair falling over a face that was shockingly handsome in its eerie otherness, smirked. "A toy gun isn't going to do you any good." Suddenly he was in front of her, long, strong fingers closing over her rib cage, though she hadn't so much as seen him blink.

  It was too much.

  She pulled the trigger.

  The sound was huge in the enclosed space, Sorrow's scream a reverberating echo. Venom went down, clutching at his thigh. Tucking her gun back into the holster, Honor picked up her coffee again, surprised at her own calm. "No touching. Ever."

  The vampire grimaced, pulled himself into a sitting position against the wall, his hand clamped over a thigh pumping blood at a speed that would've promised death for a mortal. "Do you know how much this suit fucking cost?"

  On the other side of the counter, Sorrow leaned against the sink, wild color in her cheeks. "I want to learn to do that," she said, staring at Honor. "To defend myself."

  A snort from the vampire, who was already beginning to heal. "I hear you did a mighty fine job of defending yourself today, kitty." Sorrow's snarl filled the air. "You should've ripped his nuts off before you killed him, you know," Venom said in a considering tone. "Would've hurt like a bitch."

  Honor's lips twitched. "Good advice." Putting down her coffee, she watched as Sorrow went to clean up the mess she'd made, glaring at Venom when he picked up a broken piece to give to her.

  "It wasn't conscious," the young woman said after a while. "I don't know how I did it--I'm just a stupid kid on my own."

  No woman should ever be helpless.

  The thought came from deep, deep within her. "I'll teach you," she said, and it was a decision that took no thought.

  Venom pushed himself upright, though he continued to favor one leg. "You sure you want to invest the time? Sorrow here might have a very short life span."

  Dumping the broken shards she'd collected into the trash, Sorrow gave Venom a look that was eerie in its own way, a thin line of green glowing around the dark brown of her irises. "Someday," she said in a voice as serene as a high mountain lake, "I'm going to break your neck. Then I'm going to saw it off with a hacksaw so I can take my time."

  Venom's grin creased his cheeks. "I knew you had it in you, kitty."

  Dmitri had dealt with the Hernandez situation and was in his office by the time Honor drove the Ferrari into the Tower garage. Watching her enter the room, all feminine power and intriguing strength, he couldn't imagine the terror-crippled woman he'd first met. Yet that terror lived inside of her--he'd tasted the ugliness of it in the air as he stroked his thumb over her skin that morning. "Sorrow?"

  "Doing better than I expected." An incisive look. "Venom is highly intelligent."

  "He's one of the Seven for a reason." Spreading a number of colored printouts on his desk, he motioned her over. "I just received an e-mail from the man I sent to investigate Tommy's cabin." The images were self-explanatory.

  Honor's body brushed against his own as she came to stand beside him. He wondered if she would dare remain so close if she knew how much control it was taking for him not to bend his head and kiss the delicate skin of her nape. She'd taste of salt and wildflowers, intermingled with an earthy femininity that sang a siren song to the man beneath the civilized surface.

  "His attacker," she said, her attention on the photo of Tommy's head nailed up like a hunting trophy on his front door, "really wanted to shut him up."

  "Literally." Satisfying himself with the thought that he would have her, he moved his gaze off the vulnerable skin so close and tapped the image. "They cut out his tongue."

  Her body pressed a fraction into him as she leaned over to pick up another photograph. "The place is a bloodbath."

  Weaving a curl of sin, rich as brandy and just as heady, around her was as natural to him as breathing. "I've got a team examining it."

  "Dmitri." Husky censure, but no anger. "I'll get ready to head--"

  "You're exhausted." He took in the black circles under her eyes, the pallor, felt the ice of ruthless anger. "If you came up against one of them today you'd end up their blood pet all over again."

  Streaks of color high on her cheekbones. "You might order your people around, but don't even try it with me."

  Some men liked women who knew how to submit; others, women who fought back. Dmitri didn't have a preference either way. To do so would be to care for a female beyond a fleeting sexual connection. Yet when it came to Honor, he wanted to strip her bare in more ways than one, unravel the mystery of who she was to him. "A single phone call," he murmured, gaze lingering on the full curves of her mouth in conscious provocation, "and Sara will deem you unfit for duty."

  That mouth flattened. "You think that'll stop me?"

  "No. But the fact that you have no idea of the location of Tommy's cabin will." His lips curved when he caught the calculation in her. Such an expressive face, had Honor, one that would never be able to hide anything from a man who knew how to read her. "Don't bother to ask Vivek to dig it out for you unless you want him to become a permanent guest of the Tower."

  "Threats now, Dmitri?" It was somehow an intimate question, his name pronounced with an accent so perfect, it was a caress.

  "You always knew I wasn't a nice man," he said, wanting to hear that voice in bed, in the warm hush of a pleasure-drenched night. "Go home. Sleep. Be a good g
irl"--he leaned close enough that their breath mingled, close enough that kissing her would take only the dip of his head--"and I'll let you come on the chopper tomorrow morning."

  "If what you told me about Isis wasn't bullshit," Honor said, her voice vibrating with the force of her emotions, "then you know exactly how I feel right now. You know."

  Dmitri's response was pitiless. "I also know that if the bastards slip through your grasp because you're too weak, the regret will make you bleed worse than any wound."

  Folding her arms, Honor stalked to the window. "Could you have slept?" It wasn't about reason, about anything so sane.

  "I didn't," he said, walking to stand behind her, dangerous, muscled, immovable. "But I wasn't mortal." No emotion in his voice.

  Isis, she thought, had done far worse to Dmitri than a forced Making and bedding. "I came to tell you," she said, feeling a deep, inexorable anger that had nothing to do with their fight and everything to do with a long-dead angel, "that I figured out the tattoo on the way back from Sorrow's home."

  Turning, she looked into that sensual face that had haunted her since the first time she'd seen it and knew there was no way to protect him from this. Why she felt a desperate need to try, until it was a tearing agony within her, she didn't know. "It says, 'To remember Isis. A gift of grace. To avenge Isis. A rage of blood.' Someone's out to take vengeance for the death of a monster."

  Honor didn't go up to her own apartment when she arrived at her building. Her emotions were a kaleidoscope of shattered pieces--anger, pain, aggravation, that strange, piercing desolation . . . and a need that seemed to be growing ever stronger. Realizing Ashwini might still be in the city, she knocked on the other hunter's door and found herself invited in for ice cream and a movie.

  "Hepburn," Ashwini said, digging into the quart of mint chocolate chip she'd threatened to defend to the death with her spoon if Honor so much as looked in its direction. "Classic."

  Frustration churned within her at being forced to wait to continue the hunt, but though it galled, Dmitri was right. Her bones were tired, her mind fuzzy after days of nightmare-ridden sleep. So she dug around in Ash's fridge for the butter pecan that was her personal favorite, and, boots abandoned by the door, sprawled on the ridiculously comfortable armchair her friend had had for as long as Honor had known her. "We've seen this one before."