a plastic bag. Not Ziploc, but it would do for now. Placing the card inside, she walked back to the morning room, the halls full of a lingering silence broken only by the sound of Valeria’s whimpers.
She stepped inside to find not a speck of blood on Dmitri’s body or clothes, his bronzed arms catching her eye as he tucked his gun into an ankle holster with the unhurried actions of a man who knew he was the most dangerous thing in the room by far. Valeria by contrast, was somehow . . . diminished.
“I have it,” she said.
“Good.” He angled his head toward the drive. “Illium will watch Valeria until Andreas’s men arrive.”
Valeria made a low, pleading sound just as Honor looked out the window—to glimpse the astonishing sight of an angel with wings of silver-kissed blue coming to land on the verdant green of the lawn. “He’s . . .” Her breath rushed out of her. She’d seen still photos, even television images of the blue-winged angel, but none of it had done him justice. None of it could.
The impact was even more startling up close. Staring at him as they met by the car, she took in the eyes of Venetian gold, the black hair dipped in shimmering blue, the face that was so pure in its beauty, he should’ve been too pretty. He wasn’t. He was simply the most beautiful male creature she had ever seen in her life.
Meeting her gaze, he said, “I’ m Illium.”
Her lips threatened to curve at the unashamed curiosity in those golden eyes. “Honor.”
Dmitri, having taken a quick call on his cell phone, opened the driver’s-side door. “Valeria tries anything,” he told Illium, “cut her arms off.”
The blue-winged angel didn’t look the least disturbed by the order. Added to Dmitri’s obvious trust in him, it made it clear that, beauty or not, Illium was no pretty ornament. Though, she thought, catching the acute intelligence in that face as he spoke to Dmitri, he was fully capable of using the impact of his looks to his advantage.
“Elena and Raphael are on their way,” he now said. “Be landing around six tonight.”
Giving a crisp nod, Dmitri slid into the car. “Honor. Stop flirting with Illium. It only encourages his vanity.”
“He’s right.” Illium walked around to open the passengerside door for her. “I’m also a gentleman, unlike some people.”
As she got in the car, their eyes met and she wondered who he was beyond the startling beauty and the charm, this Illium with his wings of blue. “Thank you.”
His responding look was assessing . . . almost gentle. “You’re not like the others.”
“What?”
Dmitri roared away before Illium had a chance to respond. When she glanced back, it was to see him watching them with a distinctly considering expression on his face, his wings spread to catch the early morning sunlight. Silver threads glittered, turning him into a living mirage. “I thought,” she said, after he disappeared from view, “angels were higher up in the food chain than vampires.” And yet Illium had taken orders from Dmitri.
“He’s one of the Seven, Raphael’s elite guard,” Dmitri told her as they turned out of the gates. “I lead them.”
A hard glance. “Flirt with him if you want, Honor, but you’re mine.”
The blunt words were a shock . . . and not. “I don’t know what
“Too bad.” Said with the same lack of emotion with which he’d shot Valeria.
It scared her. A sane response. What wasn’t sane was that she wanted to reach out and touch the brutal angle of his jaw, soften him somehow. Impossible. “If it comes down to it, I’ll die to hold on to my freedom,” she said, letting the wind whip her hair off her face. “I won’t ever be a prisoner again, yours or anyone else’s.” It was a vow she’d made as she lay a broken doll in a hospital bed, one she’d spill the dark red of heart’s blood to keep.
Dmitri shifted gears with the ease of a man used to power. “I don’t intend to break you, Honor.” The harsh edge replaced by black silk, sinful and tantalizing as the rich scent of chocolate seeped into her very bones. “I intend to seduce you.”
A burst of heat low in her body, a pulse of attraction that followed no rules of rational behavior . . . and an obsession she couldn’t fight. “Ever had a woman say no to you, Dmitri?”
“Once.” He turned the corner with a smile that made her want to cup his face, trace those beautiful lips with her own. “I married her.”
Dmitri wasn’t certain why he’d told Honor that, when he spoke of Ingrede to no one. Raphael alone knew, and the archangel respected his wish to keep silent on the matter, on the wound that had never healed. “Tommy,” he said, changing the direction of the conversation when Honor opened her mouth as if to ask him about the only woman in his long, long life who had ever held his heart, “is Thomas Beckworth the Third.”
Honor’s gaze lay heavy on him but she took the cue. “Tommy is a common name.”
“Valeria confirmed.” When she’d realized that begging and pleading wasn’t going to work, the female vampire had attempted to hold the information hostage. It had only taken a couple of broken bones to end that. Dmitri had made certain those breaks echoed the half-healed fractures he’d seen on the X-rays taken after Honor’s rescue.
“Please, Dmitri,” Valeria had cried. “Don’t turn into a monster because of a mortal.”
It had made him smile in genuine amusement. “Dear Valeria, I was a monster before you were born.” He’d become one the instant the cottage burned, taking the best part of him with it.
“According to a search I asked Venom to run while you were upstairs,” he said, glancing away from a memory that would haunt him for all eternity, “seems like Tommy’s gone to ground.”
A whisper of scent, wildflowers in bloom as Honor shifted in her seat. “He can’t know we’re onto him.”
The scent of her wrapped around him, touching him on a level he didn’t permit any woman. “No,” he said, hand tightening on the steering wheel, “but he’s connected enough that he must have realized you were working for me.”
Honor caught the lines of tension around his mouth, had to curl her fingers into her hand to stop the urge to lean over and stroke them away. This madness, it might just get her killed.
“We’ll go to Tommy’s home,” he continued when she didn’t interrupt, “see what we can discover.”
That home proved to be as ostentatious within as Valeria’s had been elegant. Ornate scrollwork on the moldings, wallpaper so ugly it had to have been bought more with reference to cost than taste, the furniture clunky and covered in floral fabric as hideous—and undoubtedly as expensive—as the wallpaper.
But the bedroom was what took the cake.
“Wow,” Honor said, staring at the enormous circular bed covered in pink satin sheets as well as thousands of bloated pillows edged in white fur. “I didn’t think people actually had beds like this outside of a porn set on steroids.” Unable to stop herself, she looked up. “A mirrored ceiling. I’m shocked.”
Dmitri began to laugh, and it was a wild, beautiful sound that cut off with harsh abruptness. “Honor, leave the room.” An order coated in frost.
Her stomach clenched. It would’ve been so easy to turn on her heel, to allow him to shield her—and that was what he was attempting to do, this dangerous creature who would never be human—but to do so would be to give in to the bastards who had tried to destroy her. “No more running,” she said, keeping her tone calm through vicious force of will. “Show me.”
A taut moment, dark, dark eyes examining her. “Honor.”
“Some battles,” she said softly, holding that gaze full of secrets so very
His cheekbones cut against his skin as he said, “Behind you.”
The blown-up black-and-white photograph covered the entire wall facing the bed. It was of a naked woman hanging from heavy chains by her wrists, her legs spread and manacled to the floor. Her head was slumped, her hair falling around her face, the side of her breast bleeding where a vampire had fed.
