Archangel's Blade (5 page)

Ending the call on that, Dmitri looked out at a city that wouldn't yet slumber for hours. Honor's attackers would all die. That had never been in question. The only difference was, now that he'd felt her blade against his skin, now that he'd tasted the screaming depth of her fear, he'd take exquisite pleasure in personally cutting out vital organs from their bodies before he left them to heal in some hole . . . and then he'd do it over again.

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

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.”

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 naked 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 fucking 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.

Strange, hate-filled eyes. “I want to kill you. Every time you walk through that door, I want to pick up a machete and hack your head off.” She gulped down the blood and slammed the empty glass on the floor so hard it cracked along one side.

Using a tissue to wipe her mouth, he threw it in the trash before standing up to lean against a cabinet opposite her. “A woman cut my face today,” he told her. “Not with a machete but a throwing blade.”

Holly's eyes skimmed over his unmarked skin. “Bullshit.”

“I'm fairly certain she was going for the jugular but I was too fast.” And Honor had moved with far more grace than he'd have believed her capable of before that little demonstration. The woman was trained in some kind of martial art, trained at a level that meant she was no helpless victim. And yet she had been made one.

“Too bad she missed,” Holly muttered . . . before asking the question that had lingered in the air since the second he walked into the house. “Why won't you let me die, Dmitri?” Her words were a plea.

He wasn't certain why he hadn't killed her the instant she began to show signs of a lethal change, and so he didn't answer her. Instead, crouching back down, he tipped up her face with his fingers under her chin. “If it comes down to an execution, Holly,” he murmured, “you'll never see me coming.” Quick and fast, that was how it would be—he would not have her go into the final goodnight drowning in fear.

“Don't call me that.” Holly's harsh voice fracturing the crushing memory from the painful dawn of his existence. “Holly died in that warehouse. Some
thing
else walked out.”

It was an attempt to erase herself, and that he would not allow—but it would do no harm to permit her to establish a line between her past and the present. Perhaps then, she would finally begin to live this new life. “What would you have me call you?”

“How about Uram?” A bitter question. “He doesn't need the name anymore, after all.”

“No.” He wouldn't let her harm herself in such a way, her name itself a poisonous shroud. “Choose again.”

She thumped her fisted hand against his chest, but her anger was permeated with pain and he knew she wouldn't fight him in this. “Sorrow,” she whispered after a long silence. “Call me Sorrow.”

No joyful name that, no hopeful one, but he would give her this one choice when she'd had so many others stolen from her. “Sorrow, then.” Leaning forward he pressed his lips to her forehead, her bangs blades of silk against his lips, her bones fine, fragile, so vulnerable under his hands.

In that instant, he knew why he hadn't killed her yet. Age notwithstanding, she was a child to him. A dangerous child, but a child nonetheless, scared and trying so hard to hide it. And the murder of a child . . . it left a scar on a man's soul that could never, ever be erased.

Arriving back at Guild Academy after midnight, Honor
put her laptop bag down on the small table tucked in beside the wardrobe in her quarters. The bed took up most of the remaining space. The room was adequate, and that was it—most hunters only used the quarters when they needed to do a short, intense session of instruction at the Academy. Honor had been here since the day they allowed her out of the hospital.

It wasn't because she couldn't afford anything better. Given the fees hunters commanded as a result of the high-risk nature of their work, and the fact that she hadn't really had much downtime in which to spend that money, she'd built up a considerable nest egg before the abduction. None of it had been touched during her convalescence, as the Guild covered the medical costs of all its hunters. Truth was, she could move into a penthouse if that was what she wanted.

It just hadn't seemed worth the effort to move out.

Except tonight, the room was suddenly a cage. How could she have been so numb that she hadn't noticed the claustrophobic confines? The realization of the depth of her apathy was a slap, one that made her head ring—but not enough to settle her sharp response to the walls around her.

Beginning to sweat, she ripped off her sweatshirt and dropped it on the bed, but that did nothing to cool her down.

A few minutes after that thought passed through her head, she was dressed in a sleek black one-piece swimsuit, a toweling robe around her body. The night owls she ran into on her way to the Academy pool stopped only long enough to say hi before continuing on their way—and she was soon sliding into the pristine blue waters that promised peace.

Stroke, stroke, breathe. Stroke, stroke, breathe.

The rhythm was better than meditating. It took ten lengths, but by the end of it, she was calm. However, the feeling of suffocation struck again the instant she returned to her room—now that she'd noticed its tiny size, she couldn't get it out of her head. And there was no way she'd be able to sleep even if she forced herself to bed. Her nightmares—malevolent, clawing things—were bad enough without adding claustrophobic panic to the mix.

Having showered at the pool, she pulled on fresh clothes and picked up her laptop.

The library was quiet at this time of night, but not deserted. There were a couple of instructors working on research papers, and a hunter who looked like she'd come in from active duty.

A single glance at that shining dark hair, those worn boots, and her lips curved in joyful surprise. “Ashwini?”

The tall, long-legged hunter put down the book she'd been examining and swiveled on her heel. Face cracking into a smile that turned her from beautiful to breathtaking, she gave a “Whoop!” and vaulted over a library table to grab Honor in a tight hug. No sign remained of the knife fight that had left her seriously injured not long ago.

Laughing, Honor hugged her back—Ash was one of the rare few people she'd never had trouble allowing close, even directly after the assault. Perhaps it was because the other hunter was her best friend . . . and perhaps it was because Ashwini was the one who'd ripped off her blindfold and shot off the chains that had held her trapped and helpless, her body a piece of meat for her captors.