Archangel’s Blade (Guild Hunter #4)(44)
Author: Nalini Singh

“Devotion?” Her eyes locked with his, and in them she saw a thousand secrets, potent and swathed in velvet shadows formed of violence and pain. “If he—or she—has revered Isis this long, he must consider her his goddess.” Too precious to stain with the scrutiny of those who might look on her with a more jaundiced eye.

“Perhaps.” Not breaking the intimacy of the visual connection, Dmitri touched his hand to the side of her face.

It was no longer strange, no longer jarring, the rough heat of his skin against her own. And though her heartbeat accelerated, it did so as any woman’s would at the caress of a man so sinfully compelling. The decision instinctive, she cupped his face in her hands when, an erotic rain of bitter chocolate and liquid gold cascading over her senses, he angled his head and bent to press his lips to her own.

A flicker of black, of nothingness . . . and she was on the other side of the clearing. Glancing down at the blade in her grip, then at Dmitri, she bit back a scream. “How badly did I cut you?” A harsh question, twisted through with anger and despair and a wrenching sense of failure.

He held up a hand painted red by a diagonal cut across his palm. “Nothing major.”

The same injury might well have cost a human man the use of the nerves in his hand. Shoving the knife back into her boot after wiping it on fallen leaves, she thrust her hands into her unbound hair, her chest heaving as if she’d run a mile. “Well, that answers that, doesn’t it?” The divide between dreams and reality was a gaping chasm.

A single thick drop of blood running down his fingers, to hit the ground in crimson silence, Dmitri raised an eyebrow. “It tells me only that I need to be faster.”

Her laugh was jerky, bitter. “You are fast.” A vampire of his age and strength could snap her neck before she ever saw it coming. “You’re letting me hurt you.”

“No, Honor. I don’t let anyone hurt me.” Black silk across her skin. “I was, however, looking at your lips, not your knife hand. Next time, I’ll strip you of your weapons first.”

The sheer arrogance of the statement cut through the barbed ugliness of her emotions to incite a languid heat in her veins. “Yeah? Well, maybe next time, I’ll cut off that hand,” she said, though the sight of his blood, it did something to her, birthing a visceral repudiation.

“So long as you understand”—stalking closer, his finger brushing her lower lip, smoke tangible as a lover’s touch stroking her in places that made her gasp—“that there will be a next time.”

Honor didn’t know what she would’ve said to that announcement, because a strong wind swept over them at that instant, to be followed by an angel with wings of white-gold landing a bare three feet away. Her heart stuttered—most mortals who met the Archangel of New York ended up dead.

That was when eyes of absolute, unrelenting blue fell on her, beautiful beyond bearing . . . and utterly without mercy. The moment hung suspended in time, and she knew she was being judged. Her death, she thought, would mean as little to him as that of an insect. Dear God. How could Elena call this inhuman being her mate, take him to her bed?

“Raphael.”

The archangel shifted his attention to Dmitri, his feathers sliding against one another as he folded back his wings. “There’s been a second incident.”

Honor, drawing in air to ease a painful chest, snapped up her head as Dmitri said, “Another public location?”

“No. The victim was left in a warehouse run by a vampire who still has ten years to go on his Contract.”

“No chance of the body not being immediately reported to the Tower.” Dmitri spoke to the archangel with a familiarity that made it clear their relationship was nothing so simple as lord and liege. “You could’ve contacted me without flying here.”

Raphael glanced at Honor. “Leave us.”

No one had ever before spoken to her in that tone. “I might,” she said, not certain where she found the guts to challenge this being who made every tiny hair on her body rise in an alarm so primal, it came from the part of her brain that was without sentience or reason, “be able to help.”

The Archangel of New York looked at her for a long, chilling moment. “Perhaps. But that is not for you to decide.”

Dmitri’s lips tugged upward a fraction at whatever he saw on her face. “Go, Honor. I’ll make sure you get to examine the body.”

It was galling to realize she’d been dismissed, an overly ambitious child, but she was smart enough to know it was nothing personal. Raphael might have taken a hunter for his consort, but he wasn’t, and never would be, anything close to mortal. Turning on her heel, she headed for the stream once more. As for Dmitri—she’d settle that account later.

19

Raphael’s eyes followed Honor’s progress. “Be careful, Dmitri. She has more spirit than all your other women put together.”

Dmitri watched that strong, lithe body disappear into the trees, the strength of her even more compelling for having been reborn from the ashes of brutality. “Do you think me in danger, Sire?”

“No. But then, I did not think myself in danger either.” Allowing his wings to brush the carpet of fallen leaves, he returned to the matter that had brought him here. “This time, the message was unhidden.”

Dmitri had guessed as much. “Tell me.”

“The male was branded with a glyph. The sun hiding a sickle moon.”

“There now, lover. You will never forget me.”

His chest muscles tightened. “We’ve been unable to confirm the identity of the previous victim,” he said, strangling the memory. “Is this one ours?”

“No.” Dmitri.

I can handle seeing the body. The memory was a vicious one, but it didn’t cripple. “The fangs?”

“Near translucent.”

“A report came in from the lab early this morning,” he said, turning toward the stream. “There was a problem with the first vampire’s blood.” Honor should hear this.

Raphael fell into step with him as they headed toward her. “Tell me about your hunter.”

“I have a feeling you already know.”

A faint smile. “You’re protective of her.”

Dmitri thought back to the last time he’d felt protective of a woman. It had been an eon ago. So long ago that he hadn’t recognized the feeling until Raphael pointed it out. “It seems so.” Such protectiveness wasn’t an emotion he welcomed, speaking as it did of ties beyond the raw physicality of sex.