Archangel’s Legion (Guild Hunter #6)(13)
Author: Nalini Singh

Since it reeked down here—a disgusting miasma of droppings, spoiled food, and urine—Elena didn’t waste any time following his lead. Tugging out a pair of latex gloves from another pocket as Ransom did the same, she nodded at him to lead, and they skirted past what looked like the mummified body of a feral cat, and out of the kitchen.

The hallway beyond was narrow enough that Elena had to lean slightly to the right to avoid scraping her wing over the dark brown thickness smeared on the wall, all her air coming in through her mouth now . . . because her brain had identified the major component of the putrid stink as that of a decomposing corpse.

6

Stopping at the foot of the narrow staircase that ran along one wall, Ransom murmured, “Keep to the left and wait till I’m at the top, then come up.”

The stairs creaked under his weight, again under Elena’s, but held.

Guns out, Ransom led her down the upstairs hallway and into a room so pungent with death her stomach would’ve revolted if she hadn’t steeled herself against the gag reflex. The second slap was of humidity, something about the way the room was built acting to trap what little heat there was . . . and accelerate the decomposition process.

Immediately identifying the filthy mattress below the boarded-up windows as the source of the scent of putrefaction, Elena walked across, trusting Ransom to watch her back. The body was bloated with the gases of death, skin a sickly green, but the head remained attached to the neck, and the shirt-clad chest was unmolested, judging from a surface glance. That meant his heart was likely still inside his body.

Going down on her knee, Elena blinked rapidly to dry out eyes that threatened to water from the pulsing waves of smell, ignored the maggots, and peeled back the corpse’s lip.

Canines, sharp and gleaming white.

“He isn’t a baby vamp,” she said through gritted teeth, “so this isn’t a Making gone bad.”

“Look at the throat.”

Wings rustling against God knew what on the dirty floor, she retrieved the slimline flashlight she kept tucked alongside the knife on her left thigh and pointed the beam at the victim’s neck. “Hell.” Thick pustules filled with bloody fluid covered the male’s throat, all the way to the open collar of his shirt . . . and down.

“Smell’s getting to me, Ellie,” Ransom said, just as her own stomach began to churn.

“Me, too.”

They both ripped off their masks to take deep gulps of the crisp winter air the instant they hit the street. Gloves went next, Elena’s skin itching to breathe. When Ransom retrieved a couple of bottles of water from the panther-black body of his motorcycle, throwing her one, she took it with a nod of thanks.

“Vampires aren’t supposed to get sick,” he said, after emptying half the bottle.

Splashing some water into one hand, Elena wiped it over her face, knowing it would take multiple showers to get that foul smell out of her nose. “No, they’re not.”

“Chop off their heads, they die,” Ransom continued. “Set them on fire, or cut out their hearts, they die unless they’re strong and old old. But soon as they’re Made, they don’t get sick. One thing’s for sure—Darrell definitely didn’t have anything to do with this.”

Elena agreed. “I’m going to have to bring in a consult from the Tower.” One of the more experienced angels or vampires; maybe there was a weird vamp virus that got a minority of them and she simply didn’t know about it. “Whoever it is will probably ask you to sign a nondisclosure agreement in blood.”

Ransom pretended to plump up a vein while she made the call to Aodhan. “I think this is serious,” she said to the angel, after describing the situation. “Ransom and I need to continue our hunt—can you spare someone to guard the body until it can be moved to a morgue?”

Aodhan asked her to give him five minutes but it was almost fifteen minutes later that he personally escorted another angel to the site. A bare five foot six and slender as a boy, the unexpected angel’s uptilted eyes were a gentle brown, his lips lush in a face saved from near-feminine prettiness by the sense of sheer maleness that clung to Keir.

Her frustration at the wait dissolving into deep affection, she leaned down into Keir’s kiss on the cheek. “You must have left the Refuge as soon as it happened.” It. The Falling. An awful malice reduced to two simple words.

“Raphael had a jet prepared for me so I would not be tired upon my arrival,” he told her, eyes painfully wise. “It was strange to fly in the belly of a metal creature when I have wings of my own, but he was right.”

When Aodhan was unexpectedly recalled to the Tower a second later, Elena remained at the house to watch Keir’s back, while Ransom continued to circle out from the house, searching for any sign that Darrell had made it this far. Stomach muscles clenched against the noxious stink, Elena led Keir to the corpse, where the healer examined it in silence, not saying a word until they were back out on the deserted street.

“A true infection.” Troubled darkness in the lush brown of his eyes. “I must autopsy the body under better lighting, see if I can pinpoint how the infection was introduced into his body.”

“Ransom and I were talking before you arrived, and we thought maybe the victim drank from the wrong person.”

His expression grew darker, even more serious. “The bodies of our blood kin,” Keir said, “are built to filter out impurities in blood—that is why a vampire can feed from any donor, even the most diseased.” Strands of silky black hair fell across his dusky skin as he looked at the ground, lost in thought. “If that mechanism failed . . .”

A sudden brilliance of blue, Illium landing in front of her. Having contacted her while Keir looked over the body, he’d brought a body bag to transport the victim to the research labs underneath the Tower, a small biohazard container for her, as well as better masks and replacement gloves, and didn’t argue when she made him use the safety gear.

“This house needs to be burned to the ground,” he said when he returned with the body, his expression harsher than most people ever saw. “We can’t take the risk that the cause of the infection might lie within.”

Sensing Keir was anxious to examine the body, and aware Raphael had to need Illium, she told the blue-winged angel she’d take care of the situation and made a call to Ransom as soon as they lifted off. “I’m going to do a final run through the house.” After which she had an idea about its destruction. “I need to finish this”—stop the disease here if it hadn’t already spread—“so if you want to—”