Archangel's Blade

  "I'm going to destroy these," she said to him when he walked out, having found nothing else useful in the bedroom. It was evidence, should be handled with care. Except it was her. Naked and bound and dishonored. Rational or not, she wanted the images gone, so no one else could ever see them.

  Walking around to the trunk, Dmitri opened it to pick up a small hammer from what turned out to be a sleek toolkit. She used it to smash the memory cards into dust, then took the pliers he held out to cut the metal components into tiny, tiny bits. Dmitri was a cool-eyed audience throughout, but that cool was edgy by the time they finished going through the house--Tommy had left no clues as to his whereabouts.

  "Honor." Dmitri angled his body to face her as he brought the Ferrari to a stop in front of Guild HQ. Holding her gaze, he reached out to touch a curling strand of hair that had escaped the clip at the base of her neck, taking care not to brush any other part of her. "So soft," he murmured. "Feminine, beautiful, and tough to break."

  The pain in her chest, that horrible thing, it didn't lessen. But right then, she could've kissed him. He wasn't human, wasn't even good, but he had just given her back a piece of her pride that Tommy's evil had stolen. "I'll call you as soon as I have anything," she said, and it almost sounded like a promise.

  Rather than going up to see Sara once she entered the Guild building, she went down to the Cellars. The underground hidey-holes served a dual purpose--as a place for hunters to take cover when things got too hot, and a home for the Guild's sophisticated surveillance and data collection systems.

  All of it run by a brilliant mind trapped in a body that had been crushed in a childhood accident. Vivek only had feeling in and above his shoulders, but if anyone thought that stopped him from being the best damn "information analyst," a.k.a. spy, in the Guild's worldwide operation, they were probably going to get a rude surprise one of these days.

  "Honor," he said when she cleared his security protocols to enter the bunker that housed the computers from where--according to Guild rumors--he ruled the world. "Dmitri after you already?"

  11

  Startled, she stared . . . and glimpsed the lines of concern on his face. "I'm not hiding from Dmitri."

  "Oh, good. Though if you do piss him off enough for that, try not to attempt to shoot him in broad daylight. Sara still hasn't forgiven Elena for that."

  Honor had heard of the incident; she'd even looked up the newspaper reports online. "I think a bullet wound might hurt him for a while, but I'm fairly certain he's too old to be killed by it even if you blew out the heart."

  Vivek winced. "Oooh, Elena doesn't know that." Turning his chair around with a soft vocal command, he rolled over to the main computer panels to investigate a flashing alert. "So, did you come down here for my cheery company?" A sarcastic statement, but Honor had spent her childhood wrapped in loneliness--she understood the emotion better than most.

  "I'm sorry I haven't visited," she said. "Truth is, I probably wouldn't have left the Academy even now if Sara hadn't forced me into it." It seemed impossible that she'd been that weak, beaten creature, but she had, and it was a truth she couldn't ignore. Because never again was she going back to that.

  Vivek shot her a penetrating look. "It's safe, isn't it? People don't understand needing that."

  She thought of him here in his bunker, protected from a world that had discarded him when he became less than perfect. Except--"You have far more courage than I ever will, V." Abandoned in an institution by his family, he'd literally made himself through the sheer, stubborn refusal to surrender.

  "I was a kid when this happened," he said, voice raw. "I had a lot of time to get over the self-pity as I lay rotting in that hospital bed, so don't give me kudos I don't deserve."

  Honor shook her head, but kept her silence. Then she asked what she'd come down here to ask, though the horror of it continued to be a jagged brick crushing her chest from the inside out. "I need you to do a search." Anger and panic and nausea roiled in her stomach. "For images or video clips of me."

  Vivek's eyes flared with a rage so deep she might've been startled if she hadn't known he was hunter-born--wheelchair bound or not, he had the same instincts as the rest of the Guild. Now, turning to focus on his computers, he began to issue vocal commands so fast across so many different screens that she couldn't keep track.

  A drop of ice trickled down her spine as she watched the hits come in one on top of the other. Swallowing the bile burning her throat, she forced herself to wait until he'd completed the search. "Show me."

  Image after image filled the screens.

  She scanned every single page of results, with Vivek doing a double check. "Is that it?"

  "Yes. I dug down as far as you can go, used multiple and wide-ranging search terms."

  Shuddering, she collapsed into a chair. "They're all file photos released when I disappeared, or candid shots taken after my rescue."

  Vivek continued to talk to his computers for the next ten minutes as he checked and rechecked. "Net's clean, Honor. Whatever images the bastards took, they haven't uploaded them." A gleam in his eye. "I'd say they're too scared of the Tower."

  "They're right to be." She should've been happy, but finding Valeria and discovering Tommy's identity had only reinforced the fact that the others who had treated her like a piece of meat were out there walking around, mocking her by living their lives free of terror or fear. "I won't stop," she said so low that it didn't reach Vivek, her hand fisting on her thigh. "And neither will Dmitri." A reminder that she had someone infinitely more dangerous and relentless on her side than any of Valeria's sick friends.

  "I don't intend to break you, Honor. I intend to seduce you."

  Of course, that man also wanted to take a bite out of her. Not a little bite either. No, Dmitri wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than total, carnal surrender.

  Nine hours after he'd last seen Honor, with night blanketing the world, Dmitri had just finished speaking to Galen via a satellite link when Venom strode into the room. "Sorrow slipped her security." The vampire had had no trouble switching to Holly's new name--perhaps because he'd once embraced a new identity of his own. "At least an hour ago."

  Dmitri didn't swear. "I'll find her." He'd also be having a chat with the guards, because while Sorrow was highly intelligent and not quite human, she was also less than a quarter of a century old to their hundred and fifty-plus.

  Venom shook his head, his hair falling across his forehead. "Look," he said, shoving it back with an impatient hand, "you're dealing with this other situation. I'll--"

  "No. She's my responsibility." Elena had tracked her, but he was the one who'd coaxed her out of that tiny guard shack where she'd been hiding, her entire body encrusted with blood. "I know the places she goes."

  Venom didn't budge, his willingness to stand up to the others in the Seven part of the reason he'd been accepted into the group in the first place. "You're getting too close, Dmitri. If . . ." The vampire's black pupils contracted, hard points against the searing green of his irises. "If she has more of Uram in her than she has of her humanity, execution might become necessary."

  "That won't be a problem." He'd broken the neck of his own son, after all.

  "It will be all right, Misha. I promise." He told the lie with a smile, kissed his son on the forehead, that fine baby-soft skin so hot against his lips. "Papa will make it all right."

  The Ferrari got several "oh, yeahs!" from the boys hanging out at the curb when he slid it into a No Parking spot in front of a dingy little building with a neon sign proclaiming it The Blood Den. Since the number plate made it clear the car belonged to Dmitri, he didn't bother with warnings. Anyone stupid enough to touch his car deserved what was coming to him.

  A wide-eyed bouncer who outweighed Dmitri by two hundred pounds--and who wouldn't be able to stop him for so much as a second should Dmitri find himself annoyed--opened the door to the club before Dmitri reached it.

  "Five-foot-four woman of Asian descent,"
he said to the shaven-headed male. "Black hair streaked with pink, brown eyes"--for the moment at least--"pasty skin." Sorrow shunned the sun, not because it hurt her but because she thought she was a creature who belonged in the dark.

  "I noticed a chick going into one of the booths with a guy when I went in for a break," the bouncer said. "Could be her."

  Striding to the booth after the bouncer pointed it out, he pulled open the door to expose a twenty-something white male with his pants around his ankles. He had his hand on a turgid cock, was jerking off, a glazed look in his eyes.

  Sorrow, sitting on the bench opposite, curved crimsonpainted lips. "Come to join the party?" A mocking question that held nothing of sex, though she was dressed in a tight black dress with spaghetti straps that ended high on her thighs, her legs covered in boots of liquid black.

  Not saying a word, Dmitri slapped the male. The man blinked, looked down, back up. "Wha--"

  "Get out." Dmitri held open the door.

  Cock deflating, the man pulled up his pants and left, stumbling over his feet in his rush to vacate the room. Shutting the door, Dmitri leaned on it and watched as Sorrow threw back what looked to be a large tequila before slamming the glass down with a look of disgust. "Do you know I can't even get properly drunk?"

  "Your metabolism's altered." Along with so many other things.

  A bitter laugh. "Yeah, and I can make men whip out their cocks and jerk off in front of me. Great superpower, huh?"

  In point of fact, it was. Along with that ring of hypnotic green around her eyes and perhaps a murderous insanity, Sorrow had gained the ability to mesmerize people for short periods. Right now, she could only get them to commit acts they were already predisposed to engage in, but Dmitri didn't think it would stay that way for long. In the time since Uram had bitten her, infected her, the changes in Sorrow had progressed at phenomenal speed.

  Aware of her frustration at his lack of overt anger, he watched as she uncurled from her seat, graceful as a cat, and walked over to press herself against him. "Why haven't you ever bled or fucked me, Dmitri?" Glittering eyes. Hard words. "Not good enough for you?"

  "I don't sleep with little girls."

  Her head snapped back, eyes heavy with makeup slamming into his. "I'm no child."

  Dmitri didn't bother to argue the point. Instead, taking her hand, he opened the door.

  She resisted. "I--"

  "Enough," he said in a quiet tone that sliced through the pulsating music as if it didn't exist. "I cut small, precise pieces out of a vampire today." Honor hadn't realized that Valeria was missing most of her heart beneath her robe by the time Honor walked back into the room. "I'm planning to do a lot worse to another. So I wouldn't mess with me."

  Sorrow sucked in a breath, but didn't speak again until they were out on the street, the late spring air brisk enough to raise goose bumps on her arms. "How long did it take?" she asked in a voice that trembled.

  "What?"

  "To become . . . inhuman?"

  "Three months after my Making was complete." That was how long Misha had screamed and sobbed in the chains across from him, how long Caterina's ashes had lain exposed to the elements beside those of her mother.

  "I'm sorry, Ingrede." Standing beside the burned-out shell of the cottage, his dead son's body cradled in his arms, the most precious of burdens. "Forgive me."

  Striding to the Ferrari, he wrenched open the passengerside door. "Get in."

  Sorrow obeyed, her defiance crushed by the brutality of his mood. Suddenly she looked heartbreakingly young, but Dmitri wasn't about to cut her any slack. She'd had over a year of it. "Using vampiric abilities on mortals without approval can get you sentenced to the earth." The punishment involved being buried alive in a coffin, given only enough blood to survive.

  Her lower lip quivered.

  "My coat's in the back."

  Twisting, she pulled it over herself, shrinking down in the seat. "Are you going to put me in the earth?"

  "No. That particular penalty's been taken off the books." Raphael had done it for Elena, a gift from an archangel to his consort. "I've been tasked to come up with a replacement."

  Sorrow tugged his coat tighter around herself. "I'm sorry." The hesitant, scared words of the child he'd called her.

  Sighing, he drove them over the Harlem River and cut across Manhattan to traverse the George Washington Bridge, before bringing the car to a stop on a clifftop outlook that faced Manhattan. The cityscape was a spread of gemstones against the black of the sky, the angels sweeping across it cast in silhouette. "I'm putting you under Contract, Sorrow." It was the only way to teach her control. "Doesn't matter if you were Made without your consent, you won't be free until I decide you're not a risk."

  Having unzipped and pulled off her boots during the drive, she curled her legs under her on the seat. Tiny as she was, it didn't take much effort. "Will you teach me what I need to know?" A plea.

  "No. Venom will take care of it." The girl was becoming dependent on him.

  "I'm cold."

  "I know, Misha. You're being a very brave boy."

  "They hurt Mama and Rina." Valiant attempts to fight his sobs. "They hurt Mama and Rina, Papa."

  The sound of Misha's cries still haunted him. He wouldn't, couldn't, add another voice to that. "Venom will also start teaching you how to control your talent." Though Sorrow didn't know it, Venom's ability to mesmerize put hers in the shade. "I expect you to follow his commands."

  "I will." A pause filled with things unsaid after that quiet acknowledgment. "What am I becoming?" she asked at last.

  He could've lied to her, given her false hope, but that would only get her dead. Turning, he reached forward to tuck a wing of slick raven hair, streaked with color stolen by the night, behind her ear. She flinched and he knew she'd felt the cold blade of his anger. "No one knows. But the one thing I will not allow you to become is a problem. Do you understand?"

  Her throat moved as she swallowed. "Yes." A whisper before she turned her face into the hand he still had brushing her cheek. "I'm scared, Dmitri."

  "Papa, I'm scared."

  Sorrow wasn't Misha, small and defenseless, but she might as well have been. And so, in spite of his vow to maintain his distance, he didn't tell her that she should be afraid, that almost everyone believed her chances of surviving this were beyond limited. Instead, he caressed the dark silk of her hair and thought of the soft black curls he'd once felt under his palm as his son's body lay wracked with convulsions in his arms.

  "Please! No! Stop!"

  Honor shoved off the sheets and rolled out of the bed, her heart thudding triple time. A glance at the clock told her it had been a bare three hours since she'd collapsed, after having worked on the tattoo past midnight. Trouble was, she kept remembering what Valeria, Tommy, and their friends had done to her.

  Except that nightmare . . . she could've sworn it had had nothing to do with the pit. Maybe it had been an echo of the childhood night terrors that had been the reason she'd never been adopted, though infants were always in demand. Apparently, she'd screamed and screamed and screamed, until she wore herself out--only to start again as soon as she woke. The screaming had continued until she was four or five, after which she'd tended to wake herself up when they began and spend the rest of the night fighting sleep.

  Abandonment issues, one child psychologist had called it. Honor wasn't so sure. What she'd felt when she woke from those childhood nightmares had been too huge, too vast, a terrible darkness filled with utter desolation. The same thing that had her throat so thick now, her heart pounding deep and hard enough to bruise. Rubbing her hand over her chest to dispel the feeling, she headed to the shower.

  Dressed in fresh clothes afterward, she picked up the phone and input a number she'd never expected to use at four a.m. on a cool spring morning, the sky a smoky black broken by a scattering of light-filled offices in the high-rises.

  A dark male voice came on, asking her to leave a message.

&n
bsp; Hanging up, she rubbed her palms over her face and went to spread the blown-up photographs of the tattoos on the small dining table beside the window. She'd made a breakthrough, or what she'd thought was a breakthrough, just before she'd fallen exhausted into bed. Now, her mind clearer, notwithstanding the nightmares, she began to retrace her line of thought.

  Yes, that was definitely it. The key. Or part of the key.

  She didn't know how long she'd been working but her writing pad was covered with several pages of notes, when there was a knock on her door. Frowning, she glanced at the wall clock.

  Half past four.

  Body tensing with a strange exhilaration because it could only be one person, she picked up her gun and looked through the peephole.

  12

  She slid away the gun--odd, given who she was about to let in--and opened the door.

  "You called?" Dmitri was wearing a white shirt open at the collar and black suit pants, his hair tumbled just enough to make her think he'd been running his hands through it.

  It made her own fingers curl into her palms. "Come in," she said, a vivid image of what he might look like sated and lazy in bed forming full-fledged in her mind. Though she knew Dmitri was far more likely to be a lover who would take total control even in the most intimate of dances, her mind insisted on seeing him sprawled relaxed on his back, a teasing smile on his face--the way a man might look at a familiar lover.

  The idea was so tempting that she had to force herself to ignore it, to remember the truth of him as a sophisticated vampire who'd tasted every sin--and who wouldn't stay with the same woman beyond the time it took to satisfy his curiosity.

  "I married her."

  One woman at least, had awakened more in him than a fleeting sexual attraction. Honor had the most unquenchable desire to know everything about that woman, a hundred thousand questions she wanted to ask. However, for one question she needed no answer: it was patent that Dmitri had spoken his marriage vows long, long ago. That man didn't exist anymore, had likely not existed for centuries.