Archangel's Blade

Dmitri saw the woman in the doorway in a kaleidoscope of images. Soft ebony hair clipped at her nape, but promising a wildness of curls. Haunting—haunted—eyes of deepest green tilted up at the corners. Pale brown skin that he knew would turn to warm honey in the sun. “Born in Hawaii?” he asked, and it was a strange question to ask a hunter who’d come to do a consult.

She blinked, long lashes momentarily shielding those eyes that spoke of distant forests and hidden gemstones. “No. In a nowhere town far from the ocean.”

He found himself circling the glass and steel of his desk to head toward her. For an instant, he thought she would stumble backward and out into the corridor, but then she stiffened her spine, held her position. He was aware of the fear—sharp and acrid—skittering behind her eyes, but still he shifted around her to push the door shut.

Allowing her to leave wasn’t an option.

When he stepped back to face her once more, the ugly ripple of fear had been brought under rigid control, but her breathing was jerky, her gaze skating away from his when he tried to capture it. “What’s your name?”

“Honor.”

Honor. He tasted the name, decided it fit. “Hunter-born?”

A shake of her head.

Not surprising. Elena had likely warned the Guild Director about his ability to use tendrils of exquisite scent to seduce and lure those hunters who were born with the bloodhound capability to scent-track vampires. Sara would hardly send him fresh prey. But this woman, this Honor . . . he wanted to use luscious strokes of scent on her until she was flushed and limp, her arousal an unmistakable musk against his senses.

It was instinct to ensure she wasn’t lying to him—he swirled out a drugging whisper of champagne and desire molten as gold, orchids under moonlight, chocolate-dipped berries kissing a woman’s skin. Honor shook her head a little, a barely imperceptible movement that echoed the frown lines on her forehead.

So, not strong enough to identify herself, or be identified by the Guild as hunter-born, but enough that she had a slight susceptibility to the scent lure. He was unsurprised by the discovery, having met more than one like her in the centuries since he’d developed the talent—they seemed drawn to the Guild, regardless of the fact that they carried only the merest hint of the hunting bloodline. That, of course, meant he couldn’t seduce Honor as easily as he could a true hunter-born . . . but scent wasn’t the sole weapon in his arsenal when it came to sex.

Scanning his eyes over her again, he noted the jagged pulse in her neck, but it was the skin covering the spot that held his attention. “Whoever you allowed to feed from you,” he said in a smooth murmur he was well aware held a caressing stroke of menace, “wasn’t very tidy.” Her scars denoted a vampire who’d torn and ravaged.

Her hand clenched on the handle of the laptop bag she’d shrugged off her shoulder. “That’s none of your business.”

Surprised she’d found the guts to say that to him in spite of the terror that rippled through her, raw and bleeding, he raised an eyebrow. “Yes, it is.” He’d bedded many a beautiful woman, left some sobbing with pleasure, others from a sensual viciousness that had taught them to never again attempt to play him. Honor wasn’t beautiful. There was too much fear in her. Dmitri might like a little pain in bed, but in most cases, he preferred his partners enjoy it, too.

This broken hunter, with her terror that turned the air caustic, would quiver and shatter like fractured glass with the first touch of his mouth. And still he wanted to run his fingers over that skin meant to be gilded by the sun, to trace the lush curves of her lips, the long line of her neck, the compulsion strong enough that it was a warning. The last time he’d allowed his cock to overrule his head, he’d almost ended up an archangel’s pet assassin.

Turning, he walked around to behind the sleek sprawl of his desk and picked up the garbage bag sitting on the floor. “I assume you have some experience with tattoos?”

Lines on her forehead, confusion momentarily wiping out the far more distasteful dominant emotion he’d perceived thus far. “No. My specialty is in ancient languages and history.”

Clever of the Guild Director. “In that case, tell me everything you can about this ink.” Using gloves this time, he pulled out the head and set it on the bag, the stump sticking to the plastic with a sucking sound.

The hunter stumbled backward, her eyes locked on the gruesome evidence of violence. When she jerked her gaze back to him, he saw a grim fury on that face that had already shown itself to be so expressive, he wondered if she’d ever won a poker game in her life. “You think that’s funny?”

“No.” The truth. “Seemed no point in putting him in the freezer when you were on your way.”

It was such an inhuman thing to say that Honor had to take a minute, reset her mental parameters. Because the fact was, regardless of his dark masculine beauty and modern speech, she wasn’t facing a human. Not even close. “How old are you?” The media speculations ran from four to six hundred, but at that instant, she knew they were wrong. Very wrong.

A faint smile that made the hairs rise on the back of her neck. “Old enough to scare you.”

Yes. She’d been trapped with vampires who had wanted only to hurt her, bore the scars of their abuse even now, but never had she been in the presence of someone who chilled her blood with his mere presence. Yet though he was known to be a powerful son of a bitch, ruthless as a gleaming edge, Dmitri functioned fine in the human world. Which meant he could mask the lethal truth when he wanted to, but this was who he was beneath the civilized black on black of his suit—a man who looked at a severed head the same way he might a bowling ball.

Keeping that knowledge in mind, she put her laptop bag down on the glass of his desk, since there were no chairs on this side, and forced herself to lean closer to the decapitated head. “He’s been in water?” The skin was soaked and pulpy, gone a wrinkled white—an obscene reminder of happy hours spent in the bath.

“Hudson.”

“He needs to be looked at by a proper forensic team,” she muttered, trying to see the full lines of the tattoo. “I need access to lab equipment so I can—”

Gloved hands in her vision, shoving the head back into the garbage bag. “Follow me, little rabbit.”

Heat burned her gut, seared her veins to fill her face, but she grabbed her laptop and did as ordered. His back was solid and strong in front of her, his hair gleaming a rich, evocative black under the lights. When she didn’t step up beside him, he shot her an amused look over his shoulder—except the laughter didn’t reach those watchful eyes that whispered of ages long gone. “Ah, an old-fashioned woman.”

“What?” It was taking all of her concentration to breathe, her body close to adrenaline overload.

“You obviously believe in walking three steps behind a man.”

It was beyond tempting to reach for a blade. Or maybe her gun.

Smiling, as if he’d read her thoughts, he strode to an elevator different from the one she’d ridden up in and, ripping off one of the gloves, placed his palm on the scanner. The pad glowed green for a second before the doors opened and he waved her in. She refused to enter. Maybe he was so old that she didn’t have a hope in hell of ever defeating him should he come after her—but logic had no chance against the primal animal within, the one who knew the monsters could hurt you easier if you couldn’t see them coming.

“And here I was being courteous,” he drawled, stepping inside the steel cage and waiting for her to enter before pressing something on the electronic pad to one side.

The elevator dropped at a speed that had her stomach jumping into her mouth, but that didn’t scare her. It was the creature in the elevator with her who did that. “Stop it,” she said when he continued to stare at her with those eyes of darkest brown. Yes, she’d been fascinated by him once, but that had been from a distance.

Up close, she was very aware it wasn’t safe to be alone with him. He was, she thought, capable of amusing himself by tearing her to shreds with nothing but the exquisite silk of his voice . . . before he really began to hurt her.

“The boyfriend,” he murmured, eyes dipping to her neck again, “obviously didn’t take the care with you he should have.”

Hysterical laughter threatened to bubble out of her, but she brazened it out. He had to have tasted her fear, but she’d give him nothing else. “Never left marks of your own, Dmitri?”

He leaned against the wall. “Any marks I leave are very much on purpose.” Sensual tone, provocative words, but there was something hard in his gaze as he continued to stare at the ravaged flesh of her neck.

The scar wasn’t that bad—just looked like a vampire had gotten a little carried away while feeding. That had been at the end. At the start, they’d tried to keep her as undamaged as possible so she could continue to provide