Archangel's Blade (8 page)

Words spoken in a distant language, as clear to him as the sunlight. She'd been angry with him that day, his Ingrede. And yet in the end, he'd tumbled her into bed, stripped her down to her skin, and kissed every inch of her small, lush body. He'd loved sinking into her, of having his hands full of her breasts, his thighs wedged between her softer, plumper ones as he sucked and licked at her mouth, her neck. That was the day Caterina had been conceived, or so Ingrede had always maintained.

“Dmitri?”

Lashes lowering, he fought to hang on to a memory that held nothing of the pain or horror that was to follow, only to have it flitting out of reach. “I'm listening,” he said, eyes on Honor.

Her gaze lingered on him and, for an instant, he felt the most disconcerting sensation—as if he had been in this moment before—but then she blinked and looked down and it passed. “The tattoo isn't in our database. However, I've sent out some discreet feelers along the international hunter network.”

Dmitri had also put out the word amongst the network of high-level vampires who either worked in or with powerful courts. The cooperation at that level was much more prevalent than believed by most people. It was only when issues of territory and power became involved that things got problematic. “Have you had any success deciphering the lines of text?”

Her eyes sparkled, the first time he'd seen such a light in them. It fascinated him, the sudden, brilliant life of her.
This
, he thought,
this
was who she had been before she'd been broken . . . before she'd learned to taste fear in her every breath. He understood what it was to break, better than she could imagine.

“The language”—Honor's voice intertwining with one of
the most painful moments of his hundreds of years of existence—“is close to Aramaic, but not quite. It's almost as if someone took Aramaic as the base, then wrote their own . . .” A puff of breath that lifted the fine tendrils of hair that had escaped the clip at her nape. “I'd call it a code. The lines are a code.”

Drawn by the softness of her, he walked closer, saw her stiffen. “Can you unravel it?”

“It'll be difficult with so small a sample,” she said, holding her position, “but yes, I think so. I've already begun.”

He was about to ask for more details when his cell phone rang. Glancing at the screen, he saw it was Jason, Raphael's spymaster and a member of the Seven. “You've found something,” he said to the angel, his attention on the curls in Honor's hair.

“In a sense—I'll be there in five minutes to discuss it.”

Hanging up, Dmitri glanced at the skies beyond the glass, searching for Jason's distinctive black-winged form. He didn't find it—not a surprise, given that Jason had a habit of flying high above the cloud layer and then descending in a burst of speed. Looking back to Honor, he caught her staring at him. “Usually when a woman looks at me like that,” he murmured in deliberate provocation, “I consider it an invitation to take whatever I want.”

Hand clenching around the pen in her grasp, she stood to her full height. “I was thinking that you looked like a man who could break my neck with the same inhuman calm as you might a cell phone.”

Dmitri slid his hands into his pockets. “I'd be more worried at losing my cell.” He said it to shock her, but part of him wasn't certain it wasn't in fact the truth.

Honor's gaze lingered on his face, those midnight green eyes full of secrets too old to belong to a mortal . . . except this one had lived an eon in the months she'd spent trapped at the mercy of those who had none. “Everyone,” she now said, “knows vampires were once human. I'm not sure you were.”

“Neither am I.” A lie, made so by his awakening memories, memories that incited the same rage, horror, and anguish he'd felt so long ago that the time was nothing but an ancient legend to mortals. However, Honor had no right to that knowledge. Only to Ingrede would he have laid his soul bare, and his wife was long dead, ashes on the unforgiving wind.

I'll meet you on the balcony, Jason.
Though their ranges and specific abilities varied dramatically, every member of the Seven could communicate on the mental plane, an incalculable strategic advantage in certain situations. “Don't leave just yet, Honor. I wouldn't want to have to chase you down.”

Honor watched Dmitri prowl out through the small door that led onto the balcony. An angel with wings as black as the endless heart of night swept down to land with quiet grace on the very edge of the open space an instant later. Honor sucked in a breath as she saw the tattoo covering the left-hand side of his face—swirling lines, dots arcing along the curves to create a striking piece of art. Beautiful and haunting, it suited a face that carried the compelling strength of the Pacific intermingled with other cultures she couldn't quite identify. His hair, tied back in a neat queue, reached to midway between his shoulder blades.

Dmitri, with his flawlessly cut black suit paired with a vivid blue shirt, his hair just long enough to invite the thrust of a woman's fingers, was as urbane and sophisticated as the angel was rough around the edges. But one thing was clear—both were honed blades, blooded and ruthless.

 

Jason glanced through the plate-glass window. “Honor St.
Nicholas,” he said. “Found abandoned as a newborn on the doorstep of a small church in rural North Dakota. Named after the nun who discovered her and the patron saint of children. No known family.”

Dmitri wasn't surprised at Jason's knowledge—there was a reason the angel was called the best spymaster in the Cadre. “I assume you didn't come here to talk about Honor.”

The angel tucked his wings in tighter as a swift wind swept across the balcony suspended high above the frenetic beat of the city. “There's something in your voice, Dmitri.”

It was odd how good Jason was at picking up cues about people, though he was an angel who preferred to keep to himself. “Unless you have intentions toward Honor,” he said, “it's not something you need to worry about.”

Jason didn't speak for a long moment unbroken by any sound but for the wind whispering over his wings. “Do you know what was done to her?”

“I can guess.” Unlike Jason, he had intimate knowledge of the bloodlust that lived within the Made. Dmitri had had control of his from the start—perhaps because he'd stabbed his rage into Isis's body, or perhaps because he'd been determined never to become a slave to anyone or anything—but that didn't mean it didn't exist. “She's stronger than she appears.”

“Are you certain?”

“Why the sudden concern about a hunter?” Jason saw everything, but preferred to keep his distance from those he watched.

Jason didn't answer. “I've had some news from Neha's territory.”

The Archangel of India was powerful and, ever since the execution of her daughter, walking the edges of sanity. “Is it something we need to worry about?”

“No. It doesn't seem connected to anything else.” He tracked a chopper coming in to land on a roof outside Tower territory. “An angel appears to have gone missing. A bare two years from the Refuge.”

Dmitri frowned. “She can't know anything about it.” Angels that young were habitually put under the command of a senior vampire or angel.

“No. The vampire—Kallistos—who did have a care of the angel, says he assumed the young one went back to the Refuge.”

That wasn't suspicious in and of itself. A senior vampire in an archangel's court had a lot on his plate, and it wasn't unusual for young angels to bolt to the security of the hidden angelic stronghold after their first taste of the wider world. “You've alerted the Refuge?”

“Aodhan and Galen are making inquiries,” the black-winged angel said, naming two of the Seven.

Dmitri nodded. Territorial borders aside, the young ones were always looked after. “I'll speak to the other seconds in the Cadre, see if they can shed any light on the matter.”

“Angels do not just disappear.”

“No, but I've known the occasional youth to go a little wild after first leaving the Refuge.” Jason dealt mostly with the oldest of the angels, archangels included, but Dmitri continued to have contact with the younger angels because he liked to take a look at everyone coming into Raphael's territory. “I once tracked a young male to a ‘party island' in the Mediterranean.” He shook his head at the memory. “The boy was sitting there in a tree, watching the revelers—he'd never imagined that level of hedonism.”

“Such innocence.” Jason stepped to the very edge of the balcony. “Astaad,” he said, “there's something there. Maya hasn't been able to get any details but she's working on it.”

Astaad was the Archangel of the Pacific Isles and one who did not appear to play political games. “I thought his behavior was connected to Caliane's awakening.” There were always side effects when an archangel rose to consciousness, and Raphael's mother was one of the most ancient of Ancients.

“It may be nothing, rumors begun by another source.” Eyes on the city, dazzling under the sunshine, he said, “You're older than me, Dmitri.”

“Only by three hundred years.” A joke between two men who had lived longer than most could hope to imagine.

“I asked Elena what it was like to be mortal. She said time is precious in a way an immortal will simply never know.”

“She's right.” Dmitri had been both, and if he could go back in time, destroy Isis before she ever came near him and his own, he would do so in a heartbeat, though it would mean he would die in a few short decades. “I felt more as a mortal than I have in the centuries since.”

 

 

Honor watched Dmitri walk to stand beside the black
winged angel and hissed out a breath at how close he was to the unprotected edge. Unlike the angel, he had no wings should he fall, and yet he stood there with a confidence that said he wasn't the least worried about the eventuality.

A change in the air at her back.

Swiveling, she discovered the vampire with the wraparound shades in the doorway. “Dmitri's outside.”

He headed through to the balcony without a word, just as the black-winged angel stepped off the edge. Those incredible wings disappeared for a moment before he rose up at dizzying speed. On any other day, she would've followed the trajectory of his flight, but today her attention was locked on Dmitri—whose face turned to granite after hearing whatever it was the other vampire had to say.

Stalking in, he said, “Leave that. We're heading out.”

An arrogant command, but she read the tension in the air, made the connection. “Did you find the rest of the body?” Even as she spoke, she was removing the data card from the laptop in case she couldn't immediately return to retrieve it.

“Yes.” Dmitri's phone rang as they entered the elevator, but clearly the signal didn't drop because he had a quick, curt conversation.

Meanwhile, the other vampire turned to look at her. He said nothing, and those mirrored sunglasses made it impossible for her to get a reading on him. Wanting to distract herself from the fact that she was trapped in a steel cage with two deadly predators, she said, “Sunglasses in the dark as a fashion statement went out with perms.”

He flashed his teeth—but not his fangs—at her. “You don't want to see what's behind the shades, sweetheart.” The last word was a mockery of an endearment that made every hair on her body rise in defensive warning.

“Venom.”

The vampire turned to face the front again, but the corners of his lips continued to tug up at the corners. “You want me to drive?”

“No, we'll take the Ferrari. Take another car so I can leave you there.”

“I might make it faster on foot and it'll give me a chance to observe the crowd without them being aware of it.”

“Go.”

Stepping out into the artificial light of an underground garage had never felt so good—she was fairly certain that without Dmitri to hold his leash, Venom would've shown her his fangs in more ways than one. “Now I know you're important,” she said when the currently open-topped Ferrari proved to be parked in the spot nearest the elevator.

“If it took you this long, Honor, you're dimmer than you look.”

As a taunt, it was only mildly irritating, especially when it was clear Dmitri wasn't paying full attention. Sliding onto the butter-soft leather of the passenger seat, she looked over to where Venom had exited the garage. “What's with the sunglasses?”

“You haven't heard? He's been in the city long enough to have come into contact with a number of hunters.”

“I didn't work in the country much . . . before.” She took her first real breath in what felt like an hour as Dmitri drove them out of the secure Tower zone and into the music of Manhattan—complete with beeping horns, yelled-out insults, and a thousand cell phone conversations taking place at once. “Had no reason to interact with Tower personnel when I was in the city.”