Archangel’s Shadows (Guild Hunter #7)(76)
Author: Nalini Singh

Whoever this woman had once been, she’d carry horror in her veins now.

Ashwini had never told Honor, never would, but after Honor’s abduction, there’d been so many screams in her body that the noise had been deafening, a howling terror that swamped Ashwini. She’d thrown up from the pummeling force of it more than once, but she’d sat with Honor at the hospital night after night regardless, her hand locked tight with her best friend’s.

Honor had survived that vile darkness, had needed Ashwini to be strong enough to fight its echoes, be at her side.

As this woman did now.

“I’m here,” Ashwini said . . . and touched her fingertips to the back of the victim’s hand.

33

The contact was a bruising punch to the stomach delivered by a fist of cold iron, one that knocked the breath right out of her. Then came the nausea, tied to an overwhelming and dread-laced panic that made her want to curl up into a ball in the corner and rock herself to oblivion. Breaking the contact, she braced her hands on the bed and sucked in desperate gulps of air.

“Cher.”

She’d sensed Janvier walk inside, didn’t startle at his worried tone. “I don’t know how to do this.” It came out like broken glass, rough and jagged. “I don’t know how to get past her terror.”

Moving in so close that his body heat licked over her skin, Janvier picked up one of her hands and lifted it to his mouth in the way that had so quickly become familiar. The kiss was soft, a lazy seduction, and it had nothing to do with the ugliness that had consumed their victim. The gentle pleasure of it made the nausea retreat, her heart rate calm.

Lifting their clasped hands, she rubbed her cheek against the back of his hand.

“What if I stay?” he asked. “Will the touch anchor you?”

“I don’t know.” This was uncharted territory. “All my life, I’ve tried to minimize this, what I can do. Very rarely, I sense good things, but too many times, it’s cruelty and evil. So I don’t look, don’t want to look.”

“It is nothing to be ashamed of. No one can live life mired in horror.”

How did he do that? See her so easily? “Sometimes I think I became a hunter so that I could ease my shame,” she whispered. “That I choose to face physical danger because I can’t face this.”

“Yet,” Janvier said, “I’ve heard other hunters say you saved their lives by warning them to take extra weapons or backup when the intel suggested no need for either.”

“That’s different. I know things now and then.”

“And there are no nightmares? You pay no price for this knowledge?”

Ashwini couldn’t hold his gaze. Because there had been dreams before each of her warnings to fellow hunters, dreams that had left her soaked in sweat, her heart racing so hard and fast that it had caused physical pain. “Stay,” she said, her trust in him so deep, it was a part of her soul. “If . . . if it looks like I might start screaming, haul me away.” It was her secret horror, that the madness might suck her under before she even knew it was there.

“Have I ever left? Hmm?” A slow smile that made her heart ache. “Even when you wished me to perdition. Or was it to a bog infested with leeches?”

“No, I’m pretty sure it was a pit filled with fresh elephant dung.”

“Ah, we must be clear.” Another kiss to her knuckles.

Centered by the playful interaction, she clenched her fingers on his and then she reached out with her other hand and closed it with infinite care over the exposed part of the victim’s arm.

Again, the impact shoved into her like an ice pick to the brain. Every second of the terror and the pain the victim had endured, all of it concentrated into this agonizing and brutalizing force. Feeling her hand clamp down on Janvier’s while remaining gentle on the victim’s arm, Ashwini tried to see through the shriek of it but it was too viscous, too loud.

A bead of sweat formed on her temple, started to roll down. Her stomach threatened to revolt. Stifling the urge with sheer effort of will, she shuddered and thought of Janvier, of the hunt through the bayou that had left her sticky and bad tempered and bitten by what felt like a thousand mosquitoes, forget about the other bugs.

The visceral memory cleared a pathway through the rage of screaming emotion, a thin ribbon of a road that was a verdant moss green. It didn’t stop the panic, the horror, but the emotions formed a curving wall of terrible ugliness on either side of the road now, ready to smother her again should she falter in her will. Sucking in shallow breaths of air, Ashwini stepped on the road, followed it down . . . and then she was falling in a gut-churning spiral, the evil baying at her, mocking her.

Ashwini slid out one of her knives. No one was ever again going to imprison her. Slicing the howling darkness to shreds, she stepped out and . . . “Oh.”

The woman who lay so motionless on the hospital bed was not as she was now, but as she must’ve been: that stunning face with its unique beauty, of medium height and curvy, with silky black hair down to her waist.

“Hello,” Ashwini said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“We don’t have much time. I’m going.”

“No.” Ashwini reached out, took her hand. “You’ll make it.”

The woman’s smile was sad and resolute both, her shoulders firm. “No, I don’t want to stay, don’t want that life. I’m not what he made me.”

Thinking of the shell on the bed, her bones as fragile as a bird’s, her heart a flutter beneath Ashwini’s touch, and her eyes hollow, Ashwini understood that this woman would never again live, even should her body survive. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” The victim’s fingers grew thinner . . . No, they were fading. “Not enough time.”

“Tell me his name.” Ashwini fought to hold on to her for another heartbeat. “The one who hurt you.”

“I don’t remember.” No distress, as if she’d traveled beyond that. “It’s already gone. I know my name. Lilli Ying. I have a mother, a father. Please tell them I didn’t suffer.”

It was a lie, but a lie Ashwini would speak as if it were the truth. “I promise. Can you tell me anything about the person who hurt you?”

“The first monster wanted to cause us pain. It gave him sexual pleasure.” A flicker of fear pierced the peace, was quickly erased. “But then . . . then the other one came, and it was worse.” Her features faded, her voice a faraway whisper. “The other one had wings. And he drank my life from me.”