Archangel's Blade

that he hadn’t recognized the feeling until Raphael pointed it out. “It seems so.” Such protectiveness wasn’t an emotion he welcomed, speaking as it did of ties beyond the raw physicality of sex.

Sinking into a woman’s hot, wet sheath, playing with his bedmate until she whimpered and begged, it was an amusement. Pleasure and pain, sex or blood, none of it touched the quiet, hidden core of his heart, where he continued to honor his vows to his wife.

“I can take care of this, Dmitri.”

“No.” They might have killed Isis together, but the angel had been Dmitri’s nightmare. “The message was addressed to me. I’ll find its author.”

Honor’s form appeared out of the trees on the heels of his declaration. She was standing with her body angled slightly toward them, as if she’d sensed their approach, her expression one of cool consideration.

“The first vampire’s blood,” he said to her, intrigued by the realization that she was calculating a reprisal aimed at him, “was not what it should’ve been.”

“Vampiric blood is distinctive.” Lines marring her forehead. “What was wrong with his?”

Dmitri couldn’t tell her about the toxin that built up in the bodies of angels, that was used to turn humans into vampires. That was a secret so profound Illium had been stripped of his feathers for speaking it to a mortal, a woman who had long since turned to dust. But he could give Honor the result. “The conversion process was incomplete.”

Hereto hidden strands of mahogany in her hair caught the light as Honor angled her head. “An amateur attempt that went wrong?”

He would fist that hair around his hands when he sank into her. “Yes.” Involving an angel unaware that the toxin in his blood hadn’t yet reached the threshold for a successful Making.

“I can talk to the other hunters, see if they’ve heard of anything similar.” Folding her arms, she looked down at the pebbles, back up. “Thing is, the body drop in Times Square, the butchery, it’s not something you’d do your first time around. There must be evidence of previous practice efforts.”

“We are speaking of immortals,” Raphael pointed out. “His practice could have spanned centuries.”

“Especially,” Dmitri added, “if he was a disciple of Isis.” A disciple Dmitri would not allow to live. The bitch would never come back to life, not even as a remembered goddess.

“Yes, but,” Honor argued, displaying a quiet strength that had begun to fascinate Dmitri, “the fact that he hasn’t mastered the Making process says he’s new at this aspect of things even if he isn’t new at the violence.”

“Yes.” Dmitri frowned, recalling something another member of the Seven had said to him. Sire, are you able to reach Jason?

No, he’s out of range.

Taking out his cell phone, Dmitri glanced at Honor, using his gaze to caress lips he wanted to debauch and corrupt. “Try not to get killed while I’m making this call.”

Her eyes flashed fire, stirring parts of him he’d believed entombed in that field of wildflowers that was a memorial to his Ingrede and their children.

Honor saw the shadow that swept across Dmitri’s face before he stepped away to make his call, wanted to reach out and wipe it away, the need an ache inside of her. However, not only did she not have that right, she was being examined by a male whose face was so flawless, it almost hurt to look at him. “I saw Elena this morning,” she said, wondering how she’d ended up making conversation with an archangel.

“My consort has a way of finding trouble.” Raphael’s hair, black as the night, gleamed in the forest light. “Dmitri helps you seek vengeance.”

“I think it’s more the fact that these vampires are breaking the rules.” Fooling herself about Dmitri’s motivations would only make the eventual fall harder.

“Perhaps.” He joined her at the water’s edge, his wings bare inches away, the gold filaments glittering under the sunlight. “The Guild is important to the balance of the world. Its hunters must not become prey.”

“If it had been another mortal,” she found herself asking, though it might have been safer to keep her thoughts to herself, “one not associated with the Guild?”

“Mortals have a part to play in the world, too.”

She didn’t know how to read his words, this lethal being who was capable of breaking a man’s every bone and displaying him like a macabre doll. Then she glimpsed Dmitri walking back. Dark and dangerously intelligent, with a body that had been sleeked to gleaming purity in battle, and a moral compass that was undeniably skewed, he was no less inhuman than the man he called Sire.

Perhaps he was even worse.

Where Raphael was remote, removed from humanity, the violence that was so much a part of Dmitri hummed just below the surface of his sophisticated skin. Blood and pain, she thought, that was what drove Dmitri. Why that should cause her heart to clench in unrelenting sorrow was a question to which she had no answer.

The body lay on the concrete floor of the warehouse, the young male’s arms and legs splayed in a way that was nothing natural. Jeans covered his legs but his upper half was unclothed, better to display the brand seared into a chest that bore lines of muscle development as yet incomplete.

Dmitri had repudiated the same mark with blood-soaked violence, using a knife he’d taken from Isis’s home. It was only fitting, he’d thought as he stripped off his rough shirt and pressed his back against one of the beams that had survived the fire that had taken everything from him.

The point of the blade was so sharp, it caused a bloody droplet to appear the instant he put it to his skin.

Gritting his teeth, he began to cut, thrusting deep enough to excise the scar tissue. He was a vampire now. The skin would heal whole and unmarked.

But vampires still felt pain.

Blackness engulfed him when he was less than a quarter of the way around the brand. Picking up the fallen blade with blood-slick hands the instant he awakened, he began again. And again. And again. Until there was no more trace of Isis on his body and his heart had grown so weak, he could feel death whispering in sweet, dark welcome.

A shadow of wings, a glimpse of searing blue. “Dmitri. What have you done?”

“Leave me.” It was the only thing he had the strength to say.

“No.” A wrist being thrust in front of him, his head pushed forward by an unyielding hand. “Drink.”

Dmitri resisted.

Cursing, Raphael used that same blade to slice open his vein, pushing the bleeding flesh to Dmitri’s lips without warning. A single taste and the newly awake predator within him took over.

He fed.

He hadn’t healed that day, or in the days that followed. He’d been too young Made, the same reason why Raphael had been able to overwhelm him. But he did heal. At least on the outside.

“So young,” Honor said, squatting beside the dead male, her sadness a poignant thread in her voice.

Compelled by the sound, he watched her put a gloved hand on the protovampire’s jaw, open his mouth. “We already know of the fangs.”

“No, I’m looking for something else.” Leaning in, one hand continuing to hold the victim’s jaws open, she reached back to pull a slender tube off her belt. “Would you hold the flashlight so I can see into his mouth?”

He came down on his haunches beside her, his focus on her rather than the male on the concrete. The lines of her face were elegant, her eyes not bitter or hard in spite of what she’d suffered. She’d survived with her soul intact, still had the capacity to feel compassion for the loss of a life.

Dmitri couldn’t say the same. The tattered remnants of his soul had burned up in his son’s funeral pyre. Such golden flames around his boy, such a wild blaze for such a small child. It suited him, Dmitri had thought as the final piece of his heart broke, suited his Misha with the deep laugh and the hunger to explore.

“Dmitri.”

Glancing up, he saw too much knowledge in the mysterious green eyes that watched him, too much tenderness. “Don’t you know to keep your distance, Honor?” He was a predator, would strike at her weaknesses,