Archangel’s Blade (Guild Hunter #4)(15)
Author: Nalini Singh

He flashed his teeth—but not his fangs—at her. “You don’t want to see what’s behind the shades, sweetheart.” The last word was a mockery of an endearment that made every hair on her body rise in defensive warning.

“Venom.”

The vampire turned to face the front again, but the corners of his lips continued to tug up at the corners. “You want me to drive?”

“No, we’ll take the Ferrari. Take another car so I can leave you there.”

“I might make it faster on foot and it’ll give me a chance to observe the crowd without them being aware of it.”

“Go.”

Stepping out into the artificial light of an underground garage had never felt so good—she was fairly certain that without Dmitri to hold his leash, Venom would’ve shown her his fangs in more ways than one. “Now I know you’re important,” she said when the currently open-topped Ferrari proved to be parked in the spot nearest the elevator.

“If it took you this long, Honor, you’re dimmer than you look.”

As a taunt, it was only mildly irritating, especially when it was clear Dmitri wasn’t paying full attention. Sliding onto the butter-soft leather of the passenger seat, she looked over to where Venom had exited the garage. “What’s with the sunglasses?”

“You haven’t heard? He’s been in the city long enough to have come into contact with a number of hunters.”

“I didn’t work in the country much . . . before.” She took her first real breath in what felt like an hour as Dmitri drove them out of the secure Tower zone and into the music of Manhattan—complete with beeping horns, yelled-out insults, and a thousand cell phone conversations taking place at once. “Had no reason to interact with Tower personnel when I was in the city.”

“In that case”—an amused tone—“I’ll leave it to Venom to surprise you.”

The city picked up in volume the farther they got from the Tower. New York had overwhelmed her when she’d first arrived—fresh off a bus from North Dakota. This wasn’t home—no place was home, really—but at least the Guild was here. Ashwini and Sara lived here. So did Demarco, Ransom, and Vivek. Friends who had searched for her with relentless persistence, who would die for her if it came down to it. That was something. And it gave her an anchor when everything else was spiraling out of control. “Where did they find the body?”

“In Times Square.”

Disbelief was followed by a sudden mental connection. “The same spot where Raphael punished that vampire?” The incident was legend. The archangel had broken every single bone in the vampire’s body, then left him in the center of Times Square for three long hours. Cold, calculated, brutal, it had been a punishment no one would ever forget.

At the time, she’d felt pity. Now she knew exactly how sadistic the almost-immortals could be, their minds capable of thinking of the most depraved, dehumanizing of horrors. Now she understood that Raphael’s punishment might have been nothing but a warning.

“Close enough.” Swerving around a delivery truck, Dmitri ignored the cussing of a cabdriver—who bit off his tirade midword—and stared at a suited business executive about to jaywalk across the road. She froze in place, her coffee dropping unheeded to the asphalt. “Condition of the body parts says he wasn’t dropped from the air,” he said after they flew past the woman, “so the pieces had to be carried in.”

Parts. Pieces.

Not such a surprise, given the decapitated head. “Surveillance?” she asked as they hit the edge of the wonderland of flashing billboards and crushing humanity that was Times Square.

“It’s being pulled.” Parking illegally in the middle of a street that had been blocked off, the crowd pressing at the police cordon, he got out. Everyone within a foot of him moved back . . . and kept moving as he walked through to the scene.

Honor followed in his wake, saw people’s eyes take in the knife strapped to her thigh. The tense expressions disappeared, to be replaced by wary smiles. Hunters were generally well enough liked by the general public, since folks knew that if it all went to shit and the vampires bathed the streets in blood, it would be the Guild that would ride to the rescue. Even the weaker vamps in the crowd gave her friendly nods—law-abiding citizens had nothing to fear from the Guild.

A minute later, she ducked under the police tape to find herself looking at a scene more suited to a slaughterhouse than the chaotic, vivid center of one of the most well-known cities in the world. A thousand scents surrounded her—the sweet, sweet taste of sugar from the chocolatier across the street; coffee, bitter and rich, from the place on the corner; tobacco smoke and car exhaust mixed with the sour tang of human sweat—but none of it could overwhelm the ripe, wet smell of rotting flesh.

7

The police had left the majority of the body parts in the large sports bags in which they’d been found, but even a cursory glance at the top half of the torso—which appeared to have fallen out of a bag, likely when someone got curious—showed that the vampire had been dismembered with the same hacking slices she’d noted along the neck. “Either someone was really angry or they just didn’t give a damn.”

Dmitri crouched down by the torso. “Don’t ascribe human motives to this, Honor.”

Memories of slaps that had split her lip as a child, carefully aimed punches where teachers and social workers wouldn’t see the bruises, the slice of her knife into fatty flesh as the bedroom door opened late one night. “Humans can be as vicious.” She wasn’t sorry for what she’d done to protect herself and others as a child—she’d decided the first time a foster “father” looked at her in a way no man should look at a child that she’d never be a defenseless victim.

And she hadn’t been . . . until the basement and the softly mocking laughter as elegant, manicured hands roamed her na**d body.

Fuck them, she thought, the anger that had awoken inside her the previous night blazing ever brighter. Whatever happened, she wouldn’t give the bastards the satisfaction of seeing her curl up and die.

“Yes,” Dmitri said as she let that vow settle into her very bones, “but this has the touch of an immortal.” His hair gleamed blue-black under the sunshine, a sensual invitation. Her fingers were halfway to it before she realized what she was doing.

Face burning, she retracted her hand, clenching it into a fist. What was wrong with her? Forget the fact that they were about as much in public as it was possible to get; she was certain he was capable of doing things to her that would make the basement seem like child’s play.