Archangel’s Shadows (Guild Hunter #7)(25)
Author: Nalini Singh

“I told you”—her eyes burned into him, full of a thousand secrets—“witches were burned at the stake. I’m just a woman.”

A woman who saw through the veil people put between themselves and the world, who could strip away lies to reveal the heart of darkness that lived within mortal and immortal both . . . and for whom immortals were the enemy of her sanity. He ran his thumb over her pulse, but she wasn’t there any longer, having escaped his grip with hunter slickness.

Walking to the techs, she hunkered down to talk to them, clearly hoping to find something, though she had to know the chance was low. Criminals could be stupid, but Janvier didn’t think this was one of those times. There was something very cold about throwing a human being in the garbage. It took a soul of ice to do that and walk away, and someone that devoid of feeling would cover his or her tracks with the same calculated coldness.

Again, he thought of Lijuan and of how the Archangel of China had fed from her troops. Naasir had run through brutal fighting to get word to Raphael about the enemy archangel’s ability to regenerate using the life force of others, had ended up with his back all but sliced open. Still behind enemy lines, Ashwini and Janvier had worked to slow down the hostile forces any way they could.

“Is she yours?”

Naasir’s question, silver eyes gleaming against the rich brown of his skin.

“Touch her and find out.”

“You better hurry, Cajun.”

Janvier was going as fast as he dared, but he feared it wasn’t fast enough. Ashwini was a hunter; hazard pay was a standard part of hunter contracts for a reason. And if—when—war came to the city again, she’d fight the enemy right beside him. The diagonal slice through her torso in the final hours of this battle had come within a hairsbreadth of nicking her heart and perforating other internal organs. Death could’ve stolen her from him had the vampire who’d attacked her shifted position a single inch before he struck.

Furious defiance burned under his skin.

He’d watched everyone he ever loved die of old age. They had wanted to go, having lived happy, contented lives, and he hadn’t tried to force them to hold on, to apply for a chance at vampirism and near-immortal life. He was too selfish to be that understanding when it came to Ashwini; he would not watch her star go out.

Not her.

12

Dmitri moved his bishop on the chessboard in the flickering light of the candle that burned in a holder to his left. It put him in prime position to capture Aodhan’s king.

Illium leaned back on his hands, wings lying spread on the carpet. “Looks like he has you, Sparkle.”

“I need to kill you. Later,” Aodhan muttered, staring at the board.

The three of them were sitting in the aerie at the very top of the Tower. It had been Dmitri’s lookout during the battle, the wraparound windows offering three-hundred-and-sixty-degree visibility. New York glittered beneath them in every direction, the Tower planted on a field of stars.

It reminded Dmitri of the brilliant quiet of a tiny cottage on a small farm long ago, before either Illium or Aodhan had been born. The nights had been so clear above his long-ago home that he’d stayed awake long past when a farmer should be asleep, simply to watch the stars with his wife.

The memory of Ingrede’s smile, her kiss under the starlight, it no longer drew heart’s blood. Because his heart had come back to him. She was changed and so was he, but they were who they needed to be for each other.

Honor loved it in the aerie and often kept him company when he had care of the Tower at night. Tonight, however, she was working on an intriguing historical document in their apartment, having laughingly told him to have fun with the “boys.” The “boys” were the two lethal angels with him—one sprawled to his left, the other frowning in concentration in front of him.

The aerie had no furniture, the three of them seated on the floor.

Not that it was spartan now that it was no longer a war room. The floor was covered by a fine Persian rug Dmitri had brought out of personal storage, having picked it up a hundred years past, in a market along the old Silk Road. It had been hand-knotted by a gifted artisan, the colors ruby red and yellow-gold with hints of midnight blue.

On top of it lay the large, flat multihued cushions Montgomery had supplied from the warehouse where he stored so many things, Dmitri had no idea of the inventory. That was strictly Montgomery’s domain—except when the butler took offense at how another immortal was treating a priceless work of art and decided to “relocate” it to his own care.

Thankfully, Dmitri had only had to handle that once. It had taken him three hours in the warehouse to unearth the four-inch-tall statue of a goddess of the erotic arts. The piece had been exquisite enough to prompt Dmitri to offer to buy it from the vampire who owned it, but the man wouldn’t part with his treasure until a decade ago. At which point Dmitri had placed the statue in Montgomery’s private sitting room at the Enclave house.

Most often, the butler displayed his purloined items in Raphael’s home, and the archangel made sure each piece was quietly reunited with its owner. Many men—angel, vampire, or human—would’ve dismissed a servant with such a peccadillo, but Montgomery was as loyal to Raphael as any of the Seven, and the sire understood the value of such loyalty.

“A flaw does not make a man worthless,” Raphael had once said to Dmitri. “Else I would’ve been discarded long ago.”

Now, Illium snacked on the sugared dates Montgomery had supplied, the sweetmeats part of an array of food that would tempt any appetite. Reaching out, Dmitri took a single grape, enjoying the fresh, sweet flavor and imagining feeding Honor the taste from his lips.

“Date?” Illium said with a glint in his eye.

Dmitri ignored the painted wooden bowl the angel held out. “I’m going to help Aodhan kill you—after I torture you by making you drink champagne while listening to Mozart.” The blue-winged angel hated both.

Illium grinned, unafraid of Dmitri and Aodhan’s combined wrath. “Don’t tell me you’re still heartbroken over Favashi,” he said, naming the archangel who had vast date plantations in her lands. “I won’t believe you—I admit I wasn’t even a twinkle in my mother’s eye during your liaison with the lovely Archangel of Persia, but I’ve since seen you together, and you never looked at her the way you look at Honor.”

“Illium has the right of it in this, Dmitri. Honor is your heart.” Aodhan’s crystalline eyes refracted Dmitri’s face into countless fragments, the fine grooves around the angel’s mouth the only sign of the pain he continued to bear as his injuries healed.