Archangel's Blade

concerned.

Sara didn’t say anything for a long time. When she spoke, she asked a single shattering question. “Are you happy, Honor?”

Happy? She didn’t know what happiness was anymore. Maybe she’d never known, though she’d thought she’d learned something of it by watching the biological children in the foster homes she’d been shuttled around after she left the orphanage at five. Now . . . “I exist.”

“Is it enough?”

She uncurled her fingers with effort, saw the half-moons carved into her palms, red and angry. The Guild had paid for a counselor, would continue to pay for one as long as she needed it. Honor had gone to three sessions before realizing she was never going to speak to the lovely, patient woman who was used to dealing with hunters.

Instead, she tried to stay awake, tried not to remember.

Fangs sinking into her breasts, her inner thighs, her neck, aroused bodies rubbing themselves against her as she whimpered and begged.

She’d been strong at first, determined to survive and slice the bastards to ribbons.

But they’d had her for two months.

A lot could be done to a hunter, to a woman, in two months.

“Honor?” Sara’s voice, touched with worry. “Look, I’ll get someone else. I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard so soon.”

A reprieve. But it seemed she had some tiny remnant of pride left after all—because she found her mouth opening, the words coming out without her conscious volition. “I’ll be on my way in ten minutes.”

It was only after she hung up that she realized she’d picked up a pen at some stage . . . and written Dmitri’s name over and over again on the writing pad she’d been using for her notes. Her fingers spasmed, dropping the pen.

It was starting again.

2

The Tower, filled with light, dominated the Manhattan skyline, a cloud-piercing structure from which the archangel Raphael ruled his territory. Honor hitched her laptop bag over her shoulder, after paying the cabbie, and looked up. Their wings outlined against a night sky scattered with diamonds, angel after angel came in to land as others departed. She couldn’t discern anything beyond the haunting beauty of their silhouettes, but up close, they were as inhuman as they were stunning—though word in the Guild was, you hadn’t seen inhuman until you’d found yourself face-to-face with Raphael.

Given their disparate skills, and therefore assignments, Honor had known Elena only in passing, couldn’t imagine how the other hunter handled having an archangel for a lover. Of course, right this minute, she’d rather deal with Raphael than the man she was here to meet . . . the man who was both a nightmare and a dark, seductive dream.

Forcing herself to look away from the illusionary escape of the skies, she gritted her teeth and kept her eyes focused straight ahead as she walked down the drive to the Tower entrance—manned by a vampire dressed in a razor-sharp black suit and wraparound sunglasses. Her throat dried up the second she stopped in front of him, her gut twisted, and for an instant, dark spots filled her vision.

No. No. She would not faint in front of a vampire.

Biting down hard enough on her tongue that tears sprang into her eyes, she resettled the strap of the laptop bag and looked into those sunglasses to see her own face reflected back at her. “I have a meeting with Dmitri.” Her voice was soft, but it didn’t shake and that was a victory in itself.

The vampire reached out to open the door with a strong hand. “Follow me.”

She knew she’d been surrounded by the almost-immortals from the instant she entered the secure zone around the Tower, but it had been easier to lie to herself about that fact when she couldn’t see them. That was no longer an option. The one in front of her, his shoulders covered by that perfectly fitted suit jacket, his skin holding a cinnamon tone that spoke of the Indian subcontinent, was simply the closest. Several stood near the corners of the foyer of gold-shot gray marble, sleek predators on guard. Then there was the pretty woman sitting at the reception desk in spite of the late hour.

The receptionist smiled at Honor, her almond-shaped brown eyes holding a welcoming expression. Honor tried to smile back, because the rational part of her knew that all vampires weren’t the same, but her face felt as if it had been frozen into place. Instead of forcing it, she concentrated on keeping herself together on the most basic of levels.

“She’s nonresponsive. Catatonic.”

“Prognosis?”

“No way to tell. I know I shouldn’t say this, but part of me thinks she’d be better off dead.”

Lying awake staring into the dark in a futile effort to fight the rancid horror that stalked her dreams, Honor had often thought that faceless doctor had been right, but tonight the memory incited another emotion.

Anger.

A dull throbbing thing that caught her by surprise.

I’m alive. I fucking made it. No one has the right to take that from me.

Her astonishment at her own fury was such that it carried her through the elevator ride—trapped in a small cage with a vampire who wore an Armani suit and had an aura of contained power that said he was no ordinary guard.

When the doors opened to deposit them on a floor carpeted in thick black, the gleaming walls painted the same midnight shade, she sucked in a breath. There was a sexual pulse to this place that hummed barely beneath the surface—the roses were lavish and bloodred against the midnight where they stood in their crystal vases atop small, elegant tables of lustrous black, the carpet too lush to be merely serviceable, the paint shimmering with glints of gold.

The artwork along one wall was a fury of red that drew her with its cruel ferocity.

Sensual.

Beautiful.

Lethal.

“This way.”

Blood pounding through her veins in a way she knew wasn’t safe in the company of the Made, she followed two steps behind her guide—so she’d have warning if he swiveled, went for her throat. Her gun was tucked into a shoulder holster concealed under the faded gray of her favorite sweatshirt, her knife in a sheath openly on her thigh, but she had two more hidden in sheaths strapped to her arms. It wouldn’t be enough, not against a vampire who instinct and experience told her had to be over two hundred, but at least she’d go down fighting.

Stopping in front of an open door, he waved her through before turning back toward the elevator. She took a step inside . . . and froze.

Dmitri was standing on the other side of a heavy glass desk, the Manhattan skyline glittering at his back, his head bent, strands of silken black hair caressing his forehead as he scanned the piece of paper in his hand. Her mind rolled back. Before . . . before . . . she’d been fascinated by this one vampire, though she’d only ever seen him from a distance or on the television screen. She’d even made a scrapbook of his movements—to the point that she’d started to feel like a disturbed stalker and burned the whole thing.

It hadn’t gotten rid of the strange, irrational compulsion she’d felt toward him as long as she could remember. Nothing had gotten rid of it . . . until the dank, filthy basement and the terror. That had numbed everything, but now she wondered if she hadn’t always been slightly unhinged, she’d been so obsessed by a stranger who was whispered to have a penchant for sensual cruelty, pleasure cut with pain.

Then he looked up.

And she stopped breathing.