Archangel’s Blade (Guild Hunter #4)(82)
Author: Nalini Singh

The ivy that covered most of the building added to the impression of decaying menace, as did the spread of leaves deep on the ground. As if decades’ worth of forest debris had collected on top of each other, until now, the ground was forever lost. Walking across the leaves—soft this time of year, concealing rather than betraying their passage—Honor kept her gun in hand as Dmitri’s blade cut a dark wound through the night, his stride as confident and quiet as a hunting cat’s.

She touched his arm when they reached the bottom of steps that led onto a narrow porch, pointed. “Look.”

No ivy or moss covered the central part of the stone steps. As if they had been used recently and often. When she bent down and cautiously flicked on her flashlight, shielding the beam with her palm, she was able to glean a faint path in amongst the organic matter that covered what may once have been a manicured lawn. A single nod to Dmitri, before she flicked off the flashlight and they headed slowly and silently up the steps and to the back door of the monstrosity of a house.

Dmitri angled his head.

It was strange—in a wonderful kind of way—how perfectly she understood him. Bending, she duckwalked to the nearest window. She could see nothing beyond, but she kept going, checking window after window.

The only thing that lay beyond was a stygian darkness. Since the house was enormous, that meant nothing, but she turned and straightened up enough to shake her head at Dmitri before moving past him to check the other side, while he kept watch, a silent, dangerous predator almost indistinguishable from the night. It was at the third window that she saw it.

35

Heading back to Dmitri, she whispered the results in his ear, his scent familiar, welcome. “Light appeared a second ago. Flickering, as if from a candle.” The glow of it had been diffuse in a way no electric lamp could mimic. “Deep inside the house.”

Dmitri raised his hand . . . toward one of the gargoyles on the roof.

Wings unfurled and Illium flew in silence toward the front, ready to block any attempt at escape.

“Could be a diversion,” she said, heart pounding from the rush of adrenaline caused by the unexpected sight. “Kallistos might be waiting behind the door.”

Dmitri shook his head. “I smell nothing to indicate that, and my senses are acute.” Reaching out, he twisted the doorknob with care. When it opened under his hand, he said, “A trap then.” His lips held a faint smile. “Don’t get hurt, Honor, or you’ll be waking up with fangs.”

She froze. “I haven’t been tested.” All short-listed Candidates were tested for something during the acceptance process. Theories as to what ranged the gamut, but the tests themselves were compulsory.

“Blood,” Dmitri murmured, “is not difficult to obtain, especially when it comes to active hunters.”

“Ever heard of privacy?” she muttered under her breath as he pushed the door wide and slid inside.

She followed him—into unrelieved darkness, the light she’d glimpsed hidden by the arrangement of the walls. Cutting through it with an unerring step, Dmitri made his way to the hallway. She shadowed him, rising up on tiptoe when he lowered his lips to her ear. “Stay out of sight. There’s no reason for him to believe I brought you.” At her nod, he added, “And privacy is such a modern concept.”

Deciding she’d yell at him later, she used every ounce of her skill to conceal her presence as they moved down the hallway, while Dmitri did the opposite, striding down with heavy, booted footsteps until the light came into view. It originated from a room that flowed off the hall toward the front of the house, had been reflected by the ornamental mirror opposite.

That mirror, carved with grapes and mythical creatures covered in gold, showed her nothing beyond a candle flame as Dmitri passed out of the doorway and into the dark beyond, while she pressed her back to the wall, ready to go in when needed.

“Dmitri.” A rough kind of a voice, raspy yet deep.

“Your throat never recovered.”

“I shouldn’t have displeased her as I did.” A sound that might have been a sigh.

“Your mistress wasn’t known for her patience—or the care with which she handled her toys.”

The civility of the conversation made the hairs rise on the back of Honor’s neck. She knew full well she was listening to two predators circling each other. Only one of them would survive the night.

Kallistos had lost none of his beauty in the intervening years. He had, in fact, grown further into that delicate bone structure that showcased eyes of brilliant copper, and lips so soft and well-shaped, more than one angel had been seduced by their perfection. His body, too, was a thing of beauty. Slender, but with incredible muscle tone—the air barely stirred when he moved, his tread that of a dancer.

“An exquisite creature,” Isis had called him the day she took Dmitri to her bed—and forced Kallistos to watch.

“I have been an ill host.” Kallistos waved his hand toward a tray set with a crystal decanter filled with bloodred liquid that shimmered in the candlelight. “We are two sophisticated men, are we not?”

Dmitri took in the flush high on Kallistos’s cheekbones, the glitter in those copper eyes, asked, “How long since you slept?”

The other man leaned back against the wall beside a massive fireplace. Sliding his hands into the pockets of suit pants of a deep brown that appeared almost black in the candlelight, he angled his face to its best advantage. It was, Dmitri knew, an automatic act, but not an unconscious one—because as Dmitri had learned to use the scent lure as an offensive weapon, Kallistos had learned to use his face and body.

Now, he parted those perfect lips the slightest fraction. “There is a large bed upstairs . . . quite ready for use.” Sensual invitation in every word, the confidence of a man who had been able to bend both male and female to his advantage for centuries.

Even Isis, Dmitri thought, had cosseted him when she wasn’t torturing him. It was no wonder the young human men the vampire had lured to his lair had come so sweetly to their deaths, surrendering their bodies for him to do with as he wished. “You failed in your attempt to Make vampires.”

“I thought to build an army.” A smile designed to make his audience smile with him, to see him as a pretty adornment, no threat at all. “A silly premise, I soon came to realize, but why not use the slaves I already had? It was fun leaving presents on your doorstep.”

Pushing off the wall with a look full of delight, he circled around the sofa until they stood only a few feet apart, his gait elegant. “Then it struck me—I didn’t need to have an army to destroy you.” He spread his hands. “All I had to do was take someone you loved and make you watch while I slaughtered her.”