Archangel's Blade

31

A very sexy shower later—Lord, but Dmitri was inventive— Honor cuddled up next to him, amused at the thought of cuddling up to a vampire so lethal he scared others of his kind. “You’re a very clever man.”

He ran the fingers of one hand down the side of her face. “I know.”

Honor laughed because what else could a woman do when the man in bed with her had driven her to so many orgasms, she was still seeing stars? “That position—letting me be on top, while handing you all the power. I’m playing way out of my sexual league, aren’t I?”

“Don’t worry.” He wove his fingers into her hair. “I’m an excellent coach.”

Yes, she bet he was. Kissing her way up his body, she snuggled her face into his neck and drew in the warm scent of him. It felt like coming home.

The awakening was as rude as the sleep had been pleasurable.

“Amos has been spotted,” Dmitri told her after reaching out to answer his cell just before a misty gray dawn.

The vampire wasn’t on the grounds of Jiana’s Stamford estate when they arrived, but he’d left pieces behind—several of his organs sat in a glistening pile on the grass, covered with droplets of the fine, fine rain that beaded on their hair, dampened their clothing. Heavy steel spikes encrusted with blood betrayed where he’d been pinned to the earth, purple zinnias and sunny chrysanthemums crushed and splattered with blood congealed to black in pockets where the rain couldn’t reach.

“Whatever I might have dreamed of doing to him,” Honor murmured to Dmitri as they stood on the small rise overlooking Jiana’s home, the moisture-laden early morning wind lifting their hair off their faces, “this is worse.”

“He had to have been otherwise compromised or he’d have escaped those steel pegs before he was gutted, his intestines removed,” Dmitri said, eyes on the flesh and blood ropes that looked obscene surrounded by flowers struggling to reach for sunlight that wasn’t there.

“Or maybe,” Honor said, looking at the blood-soaked woman who sat rocking not far from the site of the carnage, runnels of red dripping from her arms and legs into the earth, “he didn’t want to escape . . . not until he realized she wasn’t planning to stop.” And still he’d been unable to end the life of his attacker, this woman he both loved and hated.

Dmitri’s gaze followed her own, but there was a cold consideration in it that didn’t seem to fit the circumstances. Jiana had, after all, attempted to execute her son in the most brutal fashion. The only reason Amos wasn’t dead was because he’d apparently managed to rip out one of the spikes and hit Jiana so hard across the face with it she’d ended up unconscious with a broken cheekbone, a deep gash marring that mocha skin. He was long gone by the time she alerted the guards.

“Payment for his crimes,” the female vampire had whispered when Honor and Dmitri arrived on the scene.

Honor wouldn’t have believed the woman’s violent change of heart if not for the fact that quite aside from the damage done by Amos during his escape, Jiana’s face was horribly bruised, the elegant silk and lace of her nightgown all but torn off her, her ribs cracked.

“He looked at me,” Jiana had added, eyes dull, “in a way no man should look at his mother.”

That, Honor thought, was what had pushed her over the edge—it seemed there were some things even the most devoted of mothers couldn’t accept. However, it was clear Dmitri had a different view of matters. Waiting until he shifted his attention back to her, she said, “What do you see?”

“It’s not what I see. It’s what I smell.”

Rather than asking him to elaborate, she considered all the facts, hazarded a guess. “Some kind of a sedative or tranquilizer in his blood.” There was more than enough of the latter splashed around, thinned though it was by the rain, to make a determination.

A clipped nod. “This was no act done in unthinking rage. It was calm, cold, calculated.” His eyes lingered on Jiana. “Consider the fact that in spite of her ‘cooperation’ earlier, she made no mention of the culvert that allows covert access to this property.”

“A mother’s instinct to protect trumping her rational mind,” she said, playing devil’s advocate. “As for the drugs, could be she’s lying and he didn’t only say or do something she couldn’t accept, but actually succeeded in assaulting her.

“Traumatized, she put something in his drink, waited for him to get disoriented, weak, and then she did this.” Amos could’ve easily stumbled to this part of the estate, even drugged and less than lucid. It was less than a hundred yards from the house, and with the guard at the front door having been knocked unconscious, while the others were situated around the perimeter, no one could refute that version of events.

“Plausible.” Dmitri’s eyes lingered on the pile of organs that were still pink with health, evidence of the vampirism that meant Amos would recover as long as he had a steady supply of fresh blood and a place to hide.

“Except,” Dmitri continued, interrupting her thoughts about how a man came back from being gutted by his own mother, “whatever happened here, it wasn’t simply about execution, was it?”

She looked at the scene again, consciously putting aside her impression of Jiana as a loving mother pushed to the brink, and focused only on the facts. One of which was that this had taken time. A lot of time. Because the organs . . . they’d been removed with neat precision, sat in a tidy pile.

Heart chilling at the realization, she was about to turn toward Dmitri when she glimpsed the torn and bloody piece of cloth flung a couple of feet away. “He was gagged.” And from the near-black quality of the blood caught in the wrinkles the rain hadn’t penetrated, he’d bitten through his tongue, likely shredded his lips. The ground where he’d been pinned was drenched in so much of that same blood it appeared wetter than the surrounding area, pale pink dew gleaming on some of the chrysanthemums hanging from broken stems.

The conclusion wasn’t an easy one, but it had to be said. “She enjoyed this.”

“There is every indication.” Turning, Dmitri walked to Jiana, a sleek shadow in the black jeans, boots, and black T-shirt he’d pulled on during a quick stop at the Tower.

Honor forced herself to follow, though it tormented her to think of a mother taking pleasure in the murder of her child, no matter the evil done by that child. It was something she simply had trouble comprehending, the maternal instinct within her a staggering force . . . though she had no children of her own.

Shaking her head to clear it, she came to a standstill beside Dmitri as he looked down at Jiana’s apparently tormented form. “You were too clever, Jiana,” he said in a purr of a voice that wrapped ice around Honor’s throat.

Jiana continued to rock back and forth, her tattered nightgown clinging to her slender body, the bruises on her face having turned a sickly yellow-green at the edges as she healed. She gripped a serrated blade in one hand, the entire thing encrusted with dried blood that resisted the rain.

In a whiplash-fast move Honor didn’t see coming, Dmitri slid out a razor-sharp hunting knife from his boot and went as if to slice off Jiana’s head. The female vampire was flowing up and striking a defensive pose in the blink of an eye, her own knife slashing out toward Dmitri. He knocked it to the ground with inhuman speed, and, gripping Jiana’s wrist, held her in place as he put the edge of his deadly blade to her throat. “Now,” he said, “you will talk.”

Jiana’s gaze skittered to Honor. “Help me.” Such torment in her eyes, such a black depth of sorrow . . . and behind it, a prowling viciousness Honor would’ve missed if Dmitri hadn’t pushed the blade a fraction deeper, startling Jiana into dropping her mask of emotional pain for a single split second.

“You created him,” Honor said, sickened. “Whatever his madness, you took advantage of it to twist him even further.”

Jiana’s face morphed, the frail beauty of her transforming into something contemptuous and sneering. “He is my son.” No remorse. “Mine to do with as I choose.”

At that instant, Honor understood the depth of both Jiana’s malevolence and her intelligence. She’d had the foresight to play them from the start, her “penance” with the blood junkies a smokescreen set up just in case anyone came looking. Even if that hadn’t happened till months or years in the future, Jiana would’ve always been able to point back to her apparent distress at the time to lend credence to her protestations of being guilty of nothing except loving her child too much—a child she’d clearly always been ready to sacrifice.

And yet, Honor was certain the love Jiana had professed for Amos wasn’t all a lie. Something had tipped the balance—perhaps the fact that Amos had not only slipped the leash and begun to act on his own, rather than as Jiana’s creature, but that he’d started to attract the wrong kind of attention. “He’d become a liability,” she murmured, “might’ve betrayed you if he was taken.” Surrounded by the carnage Jiana had done—had enjoyed doing—Honor was convinced the female vampire’s hands were stained with far more evil than anyone other than Amos realized. “He learned everything he knew from you.”

A flash of vicious rage in those onyx-dark eyes that turned Honor’s guess into truth even before Jiana said, “I would’ve forgiven his taking of you—it was an intriguing amusement after all.” Words designed to stab and cut. “But the stupid boy planned to take two more hunters after I warned him to stay quiet and out of sight.”

So Jiana had set out to torture, then execute him. If she had succeeded, Amos’s death would’ve been far more painful than anything Honor could’ve ever devised . . . for he would’ve died looking into the pitiless face of the one woman who was meant to love him without corruption or condition.

A woman whose mouth now curved into a nasty smile. “I did so enjoy being kind to you in the pit. I had plans to return, to earn your trust. Your anguish would’ve been all the sweeter when I turned on you.”

“Enough,” Dmitri said, cutting Jiana off when she would’ve continued. “Where is Amos?”

“If I knew, do you think I would’ve alerted the guards?” Not giving any warning, Jiana lunged at the blade against her throat, but Dmitri was faster, dancing the weapon out of her way.

“There will be no easy death for you,” he said, gripping the vampire by the throat and lifting her up off her feet. “You will come before Raphael.”

Jiana began to kick and scream. “We fall under your purview, Dmitri! You must mete out the punishment!”

“First we must know all of what you have done.” With those words, he snapped his hand.

Jiana’s head lolled, her body going limp, and Honor realized he’d broken her neck as he’d done Jewel Wan’s. “It’ll be easier to transport her this way,” he said when he saw her staring.

The violence of his world staggered her, but she was no innocent. She’d known from the instant she decided to step onto this path that it would be no gentle ride. That didn’t mean she had to accept everything as it was. “She would’ve gone anyway.”

Dmitri passed Jiana’s limp body over to another vampire, with orders for her to be taken to the Tower under constant guard. “I was getting sick of her voice.”

“Dmitri.”

A dark glance, fine jewel-like beads of water collecting on lashes black as the night. “Trying to gentle me?”

“That line you walk,” she said, knowing he was pushing her on purpose, “it’s very thin. I’m trying to stop you from crossing it. Everything you do, every decision you make, it has a cumulative effect.”

He strode to the edge of the rise, a black silhouette against the chill gray of the morning, his eyes on the gracious home below. “Near to a thousand years, Honor.”

“You’re an almost-immortal.” Moving to join him, she touched her fingers to his. “You have another thousand to step away from that line.”

Dmitri’s expression was unreadable when he looked at her, his thoughts hidden. “Can you track Amos?”

Aware she couldn’t hope to convince him to take another path when their relationship was barely formed, she held her peace for the moment. “The blood here survived, but I’m guessing the rain will have made a mess of any smaller traces. However, Amos was bleeding badly so there’s a chance if he didn’t manage to get to a vehicle.”

“It should be safe, but take someone with you.” He raised his hand and she felt a rush of air above her head as wings of sooty black streaked across to land lower down the rise. “Jason will keep you company. I have something to attend to.”

She caught the edge in his tone. “Dmitri.”

“I’m going to personally tear apart Jiana’s Enclave property, and I’ll set Tower personnel to ensuring Amos has no hidden bolt-holes. If there are any files naming those who accepted his invitation, I’ll find them.”

Drawing in a deep breath, she looked out over the flowers. “I think we tracked them all.” There were no unknown scents or bodies in her memories, no voices that didn’t fit. “Thank you.”

A brush over her hair, and then he was gone, leaving her to her task.

She used every ounce of her skill, even asked Elena to drop by and confirm, but her instincts proved correct—Amos had bled through the culvert, but his trail ended there.

“Car,” Elena agreed when Honor showed her the tracks, her words crisp regardless of the dark circles under her eyes. “No hint of any further scent. You want me to tell the Tower to put out an alert on vehicles owned by him?”

“He’s too smart to have used anything that can be traced back to him.” Amos’s cunning was a vicious thing.

A single bead of water rolled off the white-gold of a primary feather as the other hunter spread her wings a fraction. “Never know with immortals—arrogance can sometimes blind them to reality.”

“Yes.” Honor took in the dark circles again, the lines of strain. “Tough night?”

The other woman blew out a breath, strands of her hair escaping her braid to whisper across her face. “Was up until five a.m. talking with one of my sisters. She’s going through some stuff.” A shake of her head. “Love can kick you in the gut sometimes.”

Honor thought of Dmitri, of how vulnerable she was to him, and couldn’t disagree. “But when it’s right . . .”

“Yes.” Elena’s eyes met her own, the silver shimmering despite the lack of sunlight. “I’m in no position to throw stones about getting involved with dangerous men, so I’ll just say—living in the world of immortals can be brutal. You ever need anything, including support to tie Dmitri up so you can torment him with a fork, call me.”

Honor’s lips twitched, an unexpected respite. “You still haven’t forgiven him for that.”

“I intend to carry the grudge into eternity.” Those pale, striking eyes returned to the culvert, to the blood trail, all humor fading. “I’m not a mother, but to do what you say Jiana did . . .”

“Yes.”

Elena left soon afterward, her wings a splash of brilliance against the steel of the sky, but Honor didn’t return to the city. Instead, she walked to join Jason where he stood in the shadow of an old magnolia tree, its leaves a thick waxy green. “I’d like a look through the house.” It was an itch at the back of her neck, a sense that she’d missed something . . . or perhaps seen something she hadn’t understood at the time.

The house was as elegant as the last time she’d stepped inside it—except for the evidence of a violent fight.

Holes in the walls, bloody palm prints, broken furniture, and paintings skewed crooked where they hadn’t been pulled off and thrown to the ground. “If Amos was sedated,” she said, “how did he do all this, manage to beat Jiana?”

Jason, his presence so silent that she was almost startled to hear the rustle of his wings, spoke for the first time. “A slow-acting or mild sedative would have left him with some awareness of what was happening—enough that he tried to fight it.”

“Jiana would have known,” she murmured, “how to calculate any dose to her son’s size and strength. Then all she’d have had to do was taunt him into a rage.” She could see the weaving, staggering pattern clearly now. He’d crashed into the wall there, skewed the ornamental mirror, tipped over the wooden table with its delicate legs, then kicked his way free and done something that sprayed blood over the wall.

“A blow to Jiana’s mouth,” she said, nodding at the spray.

“We’ll know for certain soon enough,” he said, his wings a whisper of darkness as he walked into a room off the main hall. “Raphael will take the memory from her mind.”

Honor shivered at the idea of such a violation. “How do you stand it?” she asked, aware it was an intimate question, but compelled to ask. “Knowing he could do the same to you?”

“Trust.” He gave her an unreadable look over his shoulder, his eyes as dark as his wings. “The kind of trust that allows you to take Dmitri to your bed even knowing what he’s capable of doing to women who edge his temper.”

Startled by the response, and by the fact that he’d picked up that piece of information though it appeared he’d just returned to the city, she looked with more care at that face marked by the swirling lines of a tattoo that should’ve made him stand out no matter his surroundings. And yet . . . Shadows, she thought, clung to Jason.

“Whatever it is you are to Dmitri, Honor,” he said in that voice as deep and quiet as the heart of night, “it’s not like Carmen or the others.” Lush black lashes came down over near-black eyes, then rose again.

Fascinated by this angel who she knew instinctively rarely spoke to those he didn’t know, she touched her hand to a shattered figurine and waited, knowing he had more to say.

“He won’t brush you off like an annoyance or let you walk away.” Spreading his wings to block the rest of the room from her view, he held her gaze. “It’s too late. Do you understand that?”