The two had to have known their actions would embolden and incite others.
"It appears Anais and Severin wish to be my guests. Let's accommodate them after the meeting," Raphael said, his tone ice-cold. "The three of us will have a private discussion after I clear this Cadre matter."
"Michaela is truly continuing to insist that Lijuan's territory be taken and split up?"
"Yes, and now Charisemnon is threatening to declare war on her. No one is taking either one of them seriously, but it's a nuisance that needs to be handled."
"The Refuge?" Meant to be neutral ground, the home of angelkind and the sanctuary of their young had suffered sporadic fighting during Lijuan's offensive. Galen and Venom had been forced to stay in the Refuge to defend Raphael's stronghold there against attack.
"It is safe," Raphael answered. "Michaela won't make the same mistake as Lijuan. She's far too smart and cunning, where Lijuan was arrogant."
Dmitri understood the difference. One relied on power, the other on manipulation and playing the tides right. "In many ways, Michaela is the perfect political animal. The vicious, manipulative kind who'd sell out her own mother to gain points."
"There is a reason you're my second, Dmitri."
"I was speaking to Dahariel earlier--I can't imagine why a man as intelligent as he is slides into bed with her."
"Have you told him that, like the spider that eats its mate, she has a habit of being the final woman her men ever touch?"
Dmitri felt his lips tug up at the corners. "I may have reminded him of the long-dead Archangel of Byzantium, and of the more recently departed Uram." He pointed beyond the window, where Naasir had Elena backed up to the very edge of the roof. "Perhaps you should intervene." An uncontrolled fall could smash her into the Tower.
"No, I think not."
Elena swiped Naasir's legs out from under him the next second and got herself back onto the main part of the roof. She was breathing hard, Naasir growling. Flipping over and to his feet, he clawed at her in seemingly undisciplined anger. Elena fell for it and was on the ground with Naasir's hand at her throat a heartbeat later.
She slapped the cold, hard surface and Naasir released her, reaching down to help her up. From Naasir, that was a compliment--it meant he'd found his opponent worthy enough that he was sticking around. Otherwise, he'd just walk away.
"Naasir won't want to leave." The other man could work apart from the others of the Seven, but his nature rebelled against long-term isolation from his family. "Venom isn't strong enough to permanently take his place in Amanat and we need the others here." It meant that of all the Seven, Naasir was the only one who'd be on his own--and he'd already been that way for ten months.
"Naasir may not wish to go," Raphael said, "but he will." An archangel's absolute confidence in one of his men. "He understands the need."
"Does he have a lover at least?" Naasir didn't do well without physical contact, especially when separated from Raphael and the others of the Seven, and his partner in Amanat, while lethal, was an ascetic who did not indulge in pleasures of the flesh.
Quiet amusement turned the Archangel of New York back into the man who had been Dmitri's friend for a thousand years. "He is a wild creature in an elegant, civilized city. What do you think his chances are?"
"He's drowning in women who're fascinated with him." No wonder Caliane was attempting to civilize him. "Your mother must fear he'll tempt one of her maidens away into danger."
"I've eased her mind on that point. Naasir may snack on the sweet and lovely, but when he chooses a mate, she will be a fierce creature with claws that bloody him and a heart as wild as his own."
Laughing because Raphael was right, Dmitri watched as, outside, Naasir took two of Elena's knives and pretended he didn't know what to do with them so Elena would show him how. "Be careful, Raphael," he said, well aware Naasir's loyalty was as unflinching as his own. "The tiger creature is flirting with your consort."
"Of course he is. She, too, is a fierce creature with a wild heart." Raphael pushed through the door, his hand snapping up to catch the knife Elena threw in his direction.
32
Janvier could tell Ashwini wanted to kick a hole in the wall when the officious man at the opera box office told them the tickets had been bought at the door, paid for in cash.
After having discovered that the jewelry store where the watch had been bought had wiped its surveillance footage, and the designer shop that had sold the five-thousand-dollar dress had no record of who'd bought it, it was the last straw.
"Damn it, it can't end like this," she said, every muscle in her body taut enough to snap. "This evil monster isn't going to get away with it!"
Cupping her face, he just held her, touched her.
At first, she almost vibrated against him, ready to tear away . . . but she didn't. Sliding his hands down to wrap his arms around her when she leaned into him, he held her close, her own arms wrapping around him in turn. They stood in silence, uncaring of the people who streamed past them on the sidewalk.
His heart hurt.
The things she'd told him, the future she'd predicted, it threatened to crush him.
Full throttle, he reminded himself. It was how they'd always lived, would live, to the last flicker of the flame that was his Ashblade's clever, vivid mind.
"Let's go for a walk," she said when she drew back after an unexpected kiss to his throat. "Clear our heads, try to think of other avenues to explore." Then, to his delight, she reached up and fixed the scarf that was about to slide off one side of his neck.
She scowled at the smile that creased his cheeks. "Don't try to hold hands."
So, of course he did. Not to tease her, but because it felt good to have her palm sliding against his . . . especially when she curled her fingers around his with a tug of her lips. It felt like coming home.
They walked through the businesspeople and the tourists, the occasional mother with a pram, the restaurant hawkers trying to talk them inside for a meal, the roadside stall owners calling out to them about "genuine imitation" gold watches and "faux designer" handbags. It was loud and chaotic and it was New York.
"I wasn't sure I would like this city," he said to her. "Yet the mad spirit of it has a way of getting under a man's skin."
"You miss the bayou, though, don't you?" Rich and dark, her eyes saw to the heart of him, and that was her right. "That old hut I tracked you to once--"
"You mean the place where you threatened to bury me in a swamp hole then douse me in fire ants?"
Ashwini bared her teeth at the taunting vampire who was the only person who'd ever totally "got" her. That time in the bayou, he'd answered the door barefoot and wearing jeans only partially buttoned, his body lazily relaxed as he leaned up against the doorjamb of the house surrounded by water on almost every side. The half-submerged cypress trees in that water had been lush with foliage and heavy with Spanish moss in the thick humidity, the landscape unearthly in its beauty.
A different, bright green moss had grown up the sides of the hut, turning it into a part of the bayou, and to the right she could see a hammock slung between two submerged trees with enough height to make it worthwhile. At any other time, she'd have climbed into that hammock and let out a sigh, happy to spend the afternoon watching the bayou water move slow and sinuous as a woman intent on seduction.
Right then, however, she'd been sorely tempted to shoot Janvier in the gut. "You made me traipse through the bayou for weeks," she muttered now. "Then, right when I had you, you made nice with the angel you'd pissed off." It wasn't the first time he'd done that, either. "You knew how mad that made me--why did you keep doing it?"
Lifting their clasped hands, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles. "I was courting you."
"Only someone with a twisted sense of humor would consider that a courtship." Turned out she was one of those people, but damn if she hadn't had fun when she didn't want to kill him. "I was going to ask if that place is yours."
"Yes. I
t is close to where I grew up." She saw him train a single look at a street thief who'd been eyeing them, and suddenly, the curly-haired teen with spotty skin decided he had to be across the road. "It is a simple, quiet place. There is no rush there, non?"
"Yes." She could imagine relaxing into the hammock with him, feeling all the cares of the world slide away. "Let's go there . . . after this is over. After Felicity can rest."
Eyes the shade of his homeland held hers, his accent evoking the lush, humid, haunting welcome of it as he said, "After Felicity can rest."
They kept walking, going nowhere in particular, the air cold in their lungs and the sunshine bright from a winter blue sky. When Ashwini's phone buzzed, she took it out with her free hand. "Guild confirmed her accounts have all been closed, and our contacts in banking say it appears she did it herself."
"Her killer talked her into it," Janvier said with absolute confidence. "Told her he'd take care of her, that if she loved him, she'd do as he asked."
Ashwini could almost hear the bastard convincing Felicity to do just that. Except . . . "She kept her apartment as long as she could, didn't give up her cat," she said slowly. "I bet you she set up an account somewhere else."
"Or," Janvier said, "left money with someone she trusted."
"No." Ashwini shook her head. "He'd cut her off from her friends by that time. I'll get the Guild cyber-geniuses to search across all possible banking institutions."
She sent the message, but wasn't hopeful they'd find anything that'd lead them to Felicity's murderer--regardless of her attempts at maintaining her independence, it was clear the young woman had been almost totally dependent on her "lover" by the end. In all probability, she'd been imprisoned soon after she was last seen, giving her no chance to access any money she had managed to hide away.
"I'm going to quietly track down and talk to the servants who work in the houses of the angels and vampires who may be capable of such cruelty," Janvier said, the strokable mahogany of his hair lifting in the breeze. "Often, they are aware of more than their masters know."
It was a good idea. "I might be able to help with that. I generally come into contact with the younger vamps, and a lot of them are at the servant level."
"We'll make a list, start circulating." He was quiet for a minute. "Cher, something Aaliyah said is gnawing at me."
"About how the vamp ordered Felicity not to say anything about their being a couple until she had her 'makeover'?" That had been niggling at her, a sharp barb in her gut.
"Yes, exactly. I don't believe she was ever part of his official cattle, that he held that out as a lure--if she was good enough, pleased him enough, she'd become one of the chosen." A punishing edge in every word. "In the interim, he must've arranged to meet her outside his usual haunts, where there would be little chance he'd be seen with her."
The more Ashwini learned about the man who'd tortured and killed Felicity after suffocating her spirit, the more she hated him. "It puts all our suspects back in the pool." And still there remained the question of how he was causing fatal injuries so eerily similar to the results of Lijuan's feeding. "But the servant angle is still worth following--one may have noticed signs of a woman he or she never saw."
Janvier shoved a hand through his hair. "I wish we didn't have to tiptoe through this investigation. Someone had to have seen her with the bastard, if we could only ask!"
Even as he bit out the words, his eyes lingered on a giggling child who'd just tugged his mother to a window display, then took in a group of women clustered around a nearby cafe table, heads bent in laughing secrecy. "But to give Felicity justice, we would have to rip open the wounds of a city that has barely stopped bleeding."
Ashwini had no answers, torn between the same competing forces.
*
Eight hours later, keeping the details of Felicity's death under wraps was no longer an issue.
*
Having split from Janvier earlier to follow through with their plan of speaking to those who staffed the homes of the powerful and wealthy and cruel, Ashwini ran into the intensive care section of the hospital to find he'd beaten her there.
"Where is she?" It came out a gasp, her heart pumping; she'd received the call while at Guild HQ, giving Sara a progress report, had decided to leg it rather than try to negotiate the heavy traffic in a cab.
"In a room down the hall." Janvier's jacket was open over his black T-shirt, his scarf missing. "This way."
She fell into step with him. "Have you spoken to her?"
A shake of his head. "The physicians are with her. I think she'll react better to a woman, in any case."
Painfully conscious of what Janvier didn't say--the torture the woman may have suffered at male hands--Ashwini met the gaze of the angel who stood guard beside the closed door at the end of the hall, wings of silver-blue pressed against the wall. "You brought her here?"
"Yes," Illium said, his golden eyes colder than she'd ever seen them. "She ran out of Central Park, naked and screaming, collapsed on the street."
"Jesus." Ashwini thought of the bitter cold, the ice. "Hypothermia?"
"A hint of frostbite--I picked her up almost as soon as she was spotted."
Which meant she'd been dropped off somewhere nearby, abandoned close enough to traffic to get herself help and attention. Not, Ashwini thought, for her good, but because the sadistic monster behind this wanted it to be front-page news. It was eight now, so the victim had run out during the busy time when people were leaving work or heading out to dinner.
"The tracks circled back to another street entrance," Janvier said, answering the question she'd been about to ask.
"Of course they did," she muttered. "Security cameras?"
"I alerted the Tower and Guild teams to go through any feeds they could find," Janvier said. "So far, nothing."
Ashwini girded her stomach. "How bad?"
Illium had parted his lips to answer when the door was pulled open from the inside and a tall, thin vampire with sandy brown hair, and aristocratic features in a pale-skinned face stepped out. He was wearing green scrubs, held a chart in one hand. "She's lost over half the blood in her body," he said, shoving a hand through his hair, leaving it standing on its ends. "However, that doesn't explain her appearance. I've never seen its like and I've been a physician for lifetimes."
Ashwini could feel the vampire's age pressing against her skin, knew he had to be at least seven hundred years old. "Is there anything you can tell us?"
"Nothing useful."
Another doctor stepped out then, a mortal woman, her hair a silver cap vivid against the deep brown of her skin. "The poor girl." Pressing the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger, she met each of their intent looks in turn. "One of you can go in, but we had to sedate her to get her to stop screaming, so I'm not sure how much sense you'll get out of her."
Janvier and Illium stayed outside while Ashwini went in. Closing the door behind her with a quiet snick and steeling herself for what she might see, she faced the bed. They'd put the victim in a private room with a sprawling view of the field of fallen stars that was the night-draped city. The woman on the bed, however, wasn't concerned with the scenery.
She lay flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling with dull brown eyes that were sharply slanted. Paired with the knife-edge cheekbones that now pushed painfully against her skin, those eyes would've given her a feline kind of beauty once, stunning and sensual. Her only flaw, for those who would see it that way, was the birthmark that covered the left side of her face and part of her neck, the color dark as port wine.
Once again, the killer had chosen a woman who may well have been vulnerable, a target wounded by the world until she'd been willing to overlook the danger signs in hope of love and safety.
Her face had shrunken in on itself, the majority of her skin a papery white that appeared leathery from a distance; Ashwini was certain that was an illusion, that it would prove as thin and brittle as Felicity's. The woman's fingernai
ls were cracked and broken, her frame emaciated, and her black hair so thin, it felt as if a touch would turn it to dust.
A bandage covered her throat, the flesh below no doubt torn and ripped.
When Ashwini gently lifted the sheet, she saw bruises and bite marks on every inch of skin exposed by the thin hospital gown. That, however, was where the resemblance to Felicity ended. Where Felicity had been a mummified husk, this woman still had some blood in her body, some flesh on her bones. As if she'd escaped before the process was complete.
Ashwini was certain she'd been released on purpose.
Replacing the sheet, careful not to nudge the IV lines that dripped into the woman, she said, "I'm Ash. My job is to find out who did this to you. Help me."
No response.
Not about to give up, she grabbed a chair from the corner and took a seat beside the bed. Then she started talking about Felicity, about what they'd found so far. "This," she said at the end, "what the bastard's done to you, what he did to Felicity, it isn't right and it needs to be stopped."
Nothing.
Ashwini wasn't even sure the victim had blinked the entire time she'd been talking. Accepting that perhaps the woman simply couldn't reply, that she'd been broken on too deep a level, Ashwini rose to her feet and put the chair back where it had been. However, when she would've left the room, something made her turn back.
No change, not even a whisper, and yet . . .
She returned to the bed, stared at the hand that lay so fragile and emaciated inches from her. It hadn't been visible when she'd replaced the sheet. "Speak to me," Ashwini whispered, but the woman continued to stare up at the ceiling.
Yet her hand, it lay in front of Ashwini like an invitation.
Throat working and skin hot, she flexed and unflexed her own hand. Her instincts screamed that she had permission, that the woman trapped in that shell of a body was crying out to her on a frequency no one else could hear. Still, she hesitated. This wouldn't be like with old and wise Keir, or with the young and teary-eyed teenager who'd discovered Felicity's body.