Angel’s Blood (Guild Hunter #1)(57)
Author: Nalini Singh

"Elena."

Her blood fired from the inside out at the sound of that voice-sex and ice, pain and pleasure. "Dmitri’s scent is messing up my trace."

"You’ve found signs of Uram?"

"Yes. Can you get Dmitri out of here?"

A pause. "He’s already leaving."

"Thanks." She ended the call. Much longer and that voice of his would creep into her soul and take up residence. Instead, she cleared her head, centered herself, and began scanning again.

Dmitri’s scent was fading at a phenomenal rate. Unless he could run very fast, he’d had access to a vehicle. She didn’t particularly care. All that mattered was that she’d lost-No, there it was. She turned left, moving at a light jog.

She was five blocks over when something made her glance up. The previously bright sky was turning a dull gray, heavy with clouds. But she caught a flash of blue, one that disappeared in the next instant. Illium. Bodyguard duty? Shrugging it off, she came to a standstill in the midst of an area that seemed mostly residential, though she could see a grocer’s tucked discreetly between two apartment buildings.

Foot traffic was lighter than in the crush of shops she’d left behind, but steady. She attracted a few nervous stares and it was then that she realized she had one of her long, thin throwing knives in hand.

"Ma’am." A shaky voice.

She didn’t turn. "Officer, I’m on a hunt. My Guild card is in the left back pocket." Hunters had carry permits for all sorts of weapons. And she never went anywhere without them.

"Ah-"

She showed him her empty left hand. "I’m going to reach for it. Okay?" Acid on the wind. Thick, dark blood. Damn, damn! She needed to be chasing that, not pandering to some baby cop who didn’t know enough about hunters to be out on the streets. What the hell were they teaching them in the Police Academy these days?

A cry from the woman in front of her and then a flash of blue swept down the street. Elena glanced at the cop, saw him staring up dumbfounded, and ran. She knew he wouldn’t come after her. He’d had that look on his face. Angelstruck. Approximately five percent of the population was born susceptible to the phenomenon. She’d heard they’d discovered medication to combat the effect, but that most people didn’t want to be "cured."

"When I see an angel, I see perfection," one man had said in a recent documentary. "For the fragment of time I spend caught up in their magic, real life ceases to exist and heaven is in my grasp. Why would I give that up?"

For a small, painful instant, Elena had envied the angelstruck. She’d lost her innocence, her belief in a heavenly caretaker, eighteen long years ago. Then the camera had cut to an image of the speaker as he was angelstruck and she’d come close to throwing up. Pure adoration, worshipful and blind. A devotion that turned angels into gods.

No, thanks.

Ten minutes later, the scent was an ache in her throat, a layer of fur on her tongue. She looked around and found herself in one of the moneyed areas of the city, somewhere east of Central Park. Very, very moneyed, she realized, looking at the elegant size of the buildings. No huge apartment complexes here. A moment’s pause and she had it-the locus. Leaving it to Raphael to smooth things over if anyone spotted her, she climbed over the locked wrought-iron gate to land in front of a freestanding town house. Seeing a very narrow pathway to the right-hand side, she walked down and around to the back.

"A private park." Amazing. She hadn’t known anything like this existed in Manhattan. The rectangular patch of lush green was bordered on every side by similar town houses, all vaguely European in design. Frowning, she touched the wall nearest her and felt no sense of age or time. Fake, she thought, disappointed. Some developer had bought up an undoubtedly pricey piece of land, created an English-type garden complex, and probably made megabucks.

Angels had money to burn.

And the scent, it was so powerful here . . . but not fresh. "He was here, but he’s gone."

"Are you sure?"

She jumped, knife hand raised, and found Raphael standing behind her. "Where the hell-glamour?"

He didn’t answer her question. "Where was he?"

"In the house, I think," she answered, trying to quieten her racing heartbeat. Also trying not to stab Raphael through the heart for doing that to her. "I thought you didn’t show off in public."

"No one’s watching." His eyes went to her hair. "They’re too busy admiring Illium’s acrobatics."

She ignored the possessive darkness crawling to life in his eyes. "We need to get inside the house." Walking around him, she was about to head up to the back door when his hand clenched on her upper arm.

She stilled, ready to throw him off, when she realized he was only interested in removing the blue feather from her hair. "Oh, for God’s sake," she muttered. "Happy now?"

He crushed the feather in his fist. "No, Elena. I’m not." His hand opened and glittering blue dust floated to earth.

She decided not to ask him how he’d done that. "You mind a little breaking and entering?"

"Venom tells me there are no heartbeats inside."

Her stomach curled. "Death? Does he smell death?"

"Yes." Releasing her arm, he took the lead.

Elena looked around the side of the house and to the street, spying Venom standing unmoving on this side of the closed-but likely no longer locked-gate. He looked like a bodyguard-cum-driver. Normal for a ritzy neighborhood like this. Satisfied he’d keep them from being interrupted, she followed Raphael to the door. "Wait," she said when he put a hand on the doorknob. "We might set off an alarm, attract attention."

"It’s been taken care of."

She thought of how fast some vampires could move. "Venom?"

A slight nod. "He’s adept at such things."

"Why am I not surprised?" she muttered, swallowing her gorge at the scent that whispered out from the house. "Oh, God."

Raphael pushed the door fully open. "Come, Elena." He held out his hand.

She stared at it. "I’m a hunter." But she curled her fingers around his. Some nightmares were too vicious to face alone.

They stepped over the threshold together, Raphael’s wings fitting easily through the door. "Built for an angel," she said, staring out at the open-plan design. There were no dividing walls in the entire first floor. The carpet in the living area was a Rorschach painting in red on white.

It should have been a violent explosion of color, but instead it was an odd sort of formless gray, the curtains drawn, the inside of the apartment dull with a heavy kind of shade that seemed to muffle sound . . . amplify everything else.