Archangel’s Blade (Guild Hunter #4)(7)
Author: Nalini Singh

His conscience wasn’t the least bothered by the idea of such sadistic torture.

“You shouldn’t have been so stubborn, Dmitri.” A slender female hand stroking down his na**d body to close over his flaccid cock.

Rage bloomed in those eyes of a bright, mocking bronze.

Shifting her hold to his balls, she squeezed until he came close to blacking out, his muscles straining against the chains that spread-eagled his standing body in the center of the cold, dark room at the bottom of the keep. The position left every part of him exposed to her and those she commanded to do her bidding.

As dark spots lingered at the edges of his vision, she kissed him, her fingernails digging into his jaw and her wings spreading out at her back, white as snow but for the wash of shimmering crimson over her primaries. “You will love me.”

The first blow came a second later, as she continued to kiss him. His back was ground meat by the time she halted the punishment, the scent of blood ripe and thick in the air.

Lips against his ear, silk against his skin. “Do you love me now, Dmitri?”

A beep.

Turning, he shut down a memory that hadn’t come to the fore for centuries upon centuries, and answered the internal line. “Yes?”

“Sir, you asked to be notified if Holly Chang changed her pattern of behavior.”

Forty minutes later, Dmitri stood outside the small suburban home in New Jersey where Holly Chang lived with her boyfriend, David. Isolated from its neighbors by a generous yard and high fences, it was nothing she could’ve afforded if the Tower hadn’t stepped in and ordered her to relocate—from an apartment block where she’d been dangerously close to too many mortals.

The human woman had just turned twenty-three when she’d been abducted off the street by an insane archangel. She’d seen her friends butchered, their limbs amputated before the pieces were put back together in a macabre jigsaw puzzle; when Elena tracked her down she was na**d and covered in the rust red of their blood.

Holly had survived the horror, but she hadn’t come out of it the same as when she went in. Quite aside from the fact that there was some question as to her sanity, Uram had either fed her his blood or deliberately injected her with some of the toxin that had fueled his murderous rampage. They didn’t know for certain, because Holly’s memories of those events were clouded to uselessness by the blinding fear that had turned her mute for days after she was found. What they did know was that the young woman was . . . changing.

“Remain by the gate,” he said to the vampire who had called him, before walking out of the shadows and up the drive to the house lit only by the flickering glow of a television in the front room.

Holly, petite and outwardly delicate, opened the door for him before he reached it. Blood stained her long-sleeved white shirt, rimmed her mouth. Raising her hand, she wiped the back of it over her lips, smearing the liquid. “Have you come to clean up the mess, Dmitri?” In those angry slanted eyes, he saw the stark knowledge that he would be the death that came for her if she lost the battle against whatever it was Uram had done to her. “It was a neighbor’s kid. Tasted sweet.”

“Careless of you to hunt so close to home.” Wrenching her forward with a hand on her left wrist, he shoved up the sleeve of her shirt before she could stop him. The bandage around her upper arm was wrapped tight. “I’m a vampire, Holly,” he murmured, reaching up to wipe away a smeared droplet of blood at the corner of her mouth with his thumb. “I know when the blood on you is your own.”

She hissed at him, pulling away her arm to stalk back into the house. Stepping inside, he closed the door at his back. He’d been here many times, knew the layout, but rather than following her to the kitchen where he could hear her washing off the blood on her mouth, he turned off the television and checked to make sure they were alone in the house.

When he did finally enter the kitchen, now lit by a bright bulb, it was to see Holly wiping her face on a dish towel, though she hadn’t changed out of the bloodstained shirt. “Death by Dmitri,” he said, leaning against the doorjamb with a laziness that would’ve fooled no one who knew him. “Is that what you were aiming for?”

A glare from eyes that had once been light brown, but were now ringed with a vivid green that was growing ever deeper into the irises. The same gleaming shade as Uram’s eyes . . . but not as dark as those of the hunter who’d used a knife on him earlier tonight. Honor’s gaze held the mystery of forbidden depths, of haunting secrets whispered deep in the night. Holly’s, by contrast, held only clawing anger and an overwhelming self-hatred.

“Isn’t that your job?” she asked. “To execute me if I prove a monster?”

“We’re all monsters, Holly.” Folding his arms, he watched as she began to pace up and down the length of the small kitchen. “It’s just a case of how far you push it.”

Back and forth. Back and forth. Hands through her hair, jagged shakes. Again. “David left me,” she blurted out at last. “Couldn’t take the fact that he found me awake and staring at him five nights in a row, my eyes glowing.” A giggling laugh that failed to hide a terrible pain that he knew had cracked her heart open. “I wasn’t looking at his face.”

“Have you been feeding?” Holly had a limited need for blood and Dmitri had made certain she’d been supplied with it.

Her response was to kick the fridge so hard she dented the polished white surface. “Dead blood! Who wants it? I think I’ll go for a nice, soft neck as soon as I can escape the f**king minders.”

Stepping into the kitchen proper, Dmitri walked around to grip her hands, still her pacing. Then he lifted his wrist to her mouth. “Feed.” His blood was potent, would fulfill any need she had.

As he’d known she would, she pulled away and slid down to sit, to hide, in a corner of the kitchen, arms locked around her knees and head lowered as she rocked her body. Because in spite of her words, Holly didn’t want to touch a human donor, didn’t want to believe she’d changed on such a fundamental level. She wanted to be the girl she’d been before Uram—the one who’d just secured a coveted position at a fashion house, who’d loved fabric and design, and who’d laughed with her girlfriends as they walked to the movies to catch the late show.

None of those friends had made it.

Turning to the fridge, he retrieved one of the bags of blood he had delivered on a regular basis and poured it into a glass before going to crouch down beside her. He pushed back a wing of glossy black hair currently streaked with cotton candy–colored highlights and said, “Drink.” Nothing else was necessary—Holly knew he wouldn’t leave until the glass was empty.