Archangel's Blade

echoed across eternity”—words Jessamy had written in her histories of Caliane’s reign.

“I spoke to Jessamy,” Dahariel said in an uncanny echo. “There has never been an awakening such as this.”

And so no one knew the rules of engagement. “We’re immortals, Dahariel. Time isn’t our enemy.” Better to wait, to learn the truth of Caliane’s sanity or lack thereof before preparing for a war that would drench the world in blood, turn the rivers red, make the sea a silent graveyard. “How’s Michaela?” Astaad’s second was the archangel Michaela’s lover, a clash of loyalties that made Dmitri wonder exactly who Dahariel served.

“Some women,” Dahariel said in that same hard tone devoid of any hint of humanity, “get under a man’s skin until digging them out makes you bleed.”

Hanging up, Dmitri wondered at the undertone of violence in Dahariel’s statement. Dmitri knew about loving a woman, but he’d never wanted to rip Ingrede from his heart, no matter the associated pain. Favashi hadn’t ever made a place for herself that deep. And Honor . . . yes, she was getting under his skin, but it was a compulsion that would end when he took her to bed, had her naked and writhing beneath him.

But first he would fulfill his promise, lay the screaming, bloodied remains of her abusers at her feet. Vengeance, as he’d told her, could taste sweet indeed.

“I will give you your freedom, never look your way again.” Attempting to be regal even when her eyes fell on the blade in his hand. “Wealth beyond imagining, it’ll be yours.”

What he wanted, Isis could never return to him. “The only thing I desire,” he whispered, touching the tip of his blade to the skin above her heart, “is to hear you beg for your life. So beg.”

The knife slid home.

It was just past eight, the world swathed in cool darkness, when, dressed in jeans, a T- shirt, and a long black coat he’d had for years, he turned into the Angel Enclave estate held by the angel Andreas. Andreas had been given charge over the interrogation and punishment of the vampires Honor’s rescuers had left alive.

“Dmitri.” Andreas’s wings—a dark amber streaked with gray—flared behind him as he greeted Dmitri in front of a home that was all glass and hard angles, unusual for an older angel. “Why the sudden interest in these two?”

Because it was personal now. “We’ll talk after I’ve spoken to them.”

The aristocratic lines of Andreas’s face didn’t shift into an expression of affront. The angel was powerful, but Dmitri was more so. The only reason Dmitri didn’t rule a territory was because he preferred to work in the Tower . . . and in the shadows. His position as Raphael’s second had never been boring yet.

In what he thought of as his “adolescence,” angry and full of a helpless pain, he’d once left to work for Neha. The Archangel of India hadn’t been pleased at his decision to return to what had been the beginnings of Raphael’s first Tower the minute he completed the term he’d agreed to serve in her court. But then she had smiled.

“So wild, both of you.” A shake of her head, those deep brown eyes holding the amusement of an archangel who had lived millennia. “Of course you find my court too genteel for your taste. Go, then, Dmitri, but should you wish for civilized company, this court’s doors will always be open to you.”

Neha had been a gracious queen then, with her consort, Eris, at her side and laughter in her eyes at what she considered the folly of youth. Now Eris hadn’t been seen for hundreds of years and her daughter Anoushka’s execution had turned the Queen of Snakes, of Poisons, into a cold-blooded creature akin to those she kept as pets.

“This way.” Andreas swept out before him.

As they passed through the wide-open central core of the house, Dmitri saw a handsome if slender man of Asian descent working at a small desk in the corner. His eyes narrowed. “Is that Harrison Ling?”

Andreas stopped. “Yes. You know him?”

“He’s Elena’s brother-in-law.” The fool had attempted to escape his Contract, been dragged home by Elena herself. Dmitri doubted Harrison had any idea of just how big a favor she’d done him—Andreas wasn’t known for his mercy toward those who broke their Contracts. The longer Harrison had remained amongst the missing, the worse the price he’d have had to pay.

“Harrison,” Andreas said with an echoing darkness in his voice, “has done very well in learning the meaning of loyalty.”

The male looked up at that instant and the fear that crawled, oily and slick, behind his eyes was a slithering thing. Dmitri felt no sympathy for him. Unlike Dmitri, Harrison had chosen to become a vampire—and he’d made that choice not knowing whether the woman he professed to love would be able to follow. As it turned out, Beth, Elena’s sister and Harrison’s wife, was incompatible with the toxin that turned human into vampire; she would die, while Harrison remained forever young.

“The prisoners,” he said, dismissing the pathetic male from his mind.

Andreas led him outside and to a small grove of evergreens behind his home. The naked creatures hanging from the branches of two separate trees keened in terror the instant they heard the rustle of angelic wings.

Holly . . . Sorrow had the same primitive reaction. She might mouth off to Dmitri, try to play power games that gave her an illusion of control, but put her in a room with an angel and she went close to catatonic. She refused to talk about what Uram had done to her, but Dmitri had seen the carnage in the warehouse, the torn limbs and blood-slick floors, the gaping mouths full of organs plump and wet, the staring, blind eyes.

“Do they still have their tongues?” he asked Andreas, noticing the fact that both men had been turned into eunuchs, their penises and testicles removed with what appeared to have been dull blades. They were vampires. The parts would grow back—which was when Andreas would order their removal once more. Without anesthetic.

“I was planning to have them cut out again tomorrow.”

Dmitri felt no disgust at the brutality of the ongoing punishment, not when he had an excellent idea of the horrors these males had inflicted on Honor for their sexual gratification. “Leave it for now. I might need to question them again.”

Andreas inclined his head. “Do you wish for privacy?”

“Yes.”

Waiting until the angel disappeared through the trees, he prowled to the vampire closest to him. “So,” he murmured, “you enjoy taking what is not yours by force?”

8

The male’s keening turned into wild panic as he recognized Dmitri’s voice. Since he was missing his eyes, his eye sockets huge black holes in his face, sound was the only thing left to him. “I don’t know anything! I would tell you if I did!”

Dmitri believed him—the vampire was weak, would have broken at the first sign of pain. But there was a chance he’d glimpsed something without knowing it. “Tell me everything,” he said, speaking to them both. “From the first instant you were approached. If it proves useful, perhaps I won’t take over your punishment.”

Terror turned them incoherent for several minutes. He simply waited it out. Cold of heart, Favashi had once called him. But since she was a bitch who had wanted only to use him, her words held no power. Still, the accusation was true—his conscience rarely troubled him, and never when it came to retribution for those who had brutalized women or children.

“Enough,” he snapped when they continued to sob and plead.

Silence, as they choked on their very breaths. Almost half a minute later, the one he’d first spoken to opened his mouth. “I was working as a private security guard when I got a call one day. Man on the other end said he’d seen me at a big party, liked the job I’d done, and did I want to earn some money on the side with an off-the-books gig.”

“Which party?”

“He never said, but we mostly worked the premier events—wealthy vamps.”