Archangel’s Blade (Guild Hunter #4)(25)
Author: Nalini Singh

“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.”