Archangel's Blade (20 page)

“Husband.” Honor woke with the word on her lips, the images from the dream as vivid as the tiny spasms low in her body. She moaned at the realization that she'd orgasmed, her thighs clenched tight around a pillow. But instead of jerking away, she rubbed herself against it, trying to hold on to the vestiges of a dream more erotic than any real-life experience she'd had—a dream that returned a sense of sexual pleasure to her she'd thought forever stolen.

Her nipples tightened to near-painful points, aftershocks rippling between her legs. “Oh, God.”

The strange thing was, she'd never been drawn to dominant men in bed, wouldn't have expected to find the dream so very sexy—especially after the assault. If she did have sex again, she'd assumed it would be with some man who'd be gentle and patient with her fears.

A brutally beautiful face, dark eyes with an edge of menace.

Yes, Dmitri wasn't gentle in any sense of the word, but there was no doubting the sexual energy between them. He was, she was forced to admit, the likely inspiration for her faceless dream lover. Her hand fisted on the sheets at the sensory memory of her lover's weight on her, so heavy and rough, the feel of his callused hand molding her breast, the clever wickedness of his mouth, the hard ridge of a sizable erection pressing against her.

Muscles low in her body clenched, wanting that thick heat pushing inside her.

“Cold shower time,” she muttered, shoving off the sheets to see that she was naked.

Panic spiked and she went to reach for the gun under her pillow—until she saw the clothes strewn on the floor, as if she'd thrown them about in the night. Laughing, she said, “Some dream.” One she wouldn't mind repeating, if she was being honest. Being tormented to orgasm by a man her dream self clearly trusted . . . yeah, it was far better than remembering that black pit filled only with pain.

The clock showed that she'd actually slept for a serious amount of time—it was half past five in the morning, and she'd fallen into bed at six the previous day. Showering, she got dressed, weapons included, and was about to call Dmitri when her cell rang.

She picked up to find Sara's deputy, Abel, on the other end. “There's some kind of a situation in Little Italy,” he said. “Can you check it out?”

Every part of her hungered to get to the Catskills, but she was a hunter and that meant something. “Signal's going to drop in the elevator,” she said. “Call you back when I reach the ground floor.”

Once there, she headed out onto the street. “So, details?”

“Yeah, not so much,” Abel said. “Cops are out there. No one's quite sure what's happening, but if you think it's ours, call me back and I'll assign someone—your Tower contract takes priority. Here's the street.” He read it out.

“Got it,” she said, hailing a cab and sliding in. “I'll call you after I've had a look at the scene.”

The cabbie began to drive. “Hunting?”

She nodded and gave him the address. It felt oddly comforting to be pegged as a hunter, because for months after the abduction, she hadn't been. “Fast as you can.”

The cabbie's eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, down, back again. “Hey, aren't you that hunter that was missing?”

Her gut twisted. “Yes.”

There was lurid speculation in the eyes in the mirror this time. “I heard you came into the hospital covered in vampire bites.”

The Guild had done everything in its power to tamp down the gossip after her return, but there'd been nothing they could do about the non-Guild personnel involved in her recovery. Add in the numerous tests she'd had to undergo to find out if the bastards who'd taken her had left her with anything other than bruises, bites, a body on the edge of starvation, and more than a few fractured bones as well as a number of internal injuries, and she'd been seen at her weakest by dozens of people.

Most of those people had been good and kind. Some had been like this cabdriver.

The cabbie's gleaming eyes, his lips half parted, threatened to shove her back into the pit, those ugly, probing hands violating her until there was nothing left. A month ago, she'd have curled into herself and gone silent. A month ago, she hadn't shot bullets into two of her attackers. “Vampires' tongues,” she said, sliding her finger carefully over the blade she'd pulled from the sheath on her thigh, “grow back when you cut them off. Humans, unfortunately, don't have that ability.”

He whimpered and dropped his head. Sweat was rolling down his temples when they arrived at her destination, and he couldn't even get the words out to ask for the fare. Swiping her credit card, she paid and got out.

Never again would anyone drag her into the dark.

Glancing up at the sound of her name, Honor saw a big black cop with distinctive salt-and-pepper stubble that appeared to be a permanent fixture.

“Santiago,” she said, having worked a case with him a couple of years back, one of the rare few times she'd been put on a situation in Manhattan. “What do you have?”

“This.” He ducked under the barrier of crime scene tape to crouch down beside a body lying half on, half off the sidewalk. Lifting away the tarp that covered the victim, he nodded at her to have a look.

“Looks like he got attacked by a dog.” The young male's neck was shredded, as if it had been gnawed on.

Santiago grunted. “Yeah, except the only places he's been gnawed are the neck and the inner thigh.”

The carotid and the femoral arteries.

Leaning in close, she visually examined both wounds. The victim's pants were bunched around his ankles, but he still had on his underpants, so the attack had been about the blood—though his attacker had wasted a great deal of it, from what she saw around the body. “I'm no pathologist, but looks to me like the wound is too degraded to determine if this was a vampire.” The fang marks had been obliterated in the mess of flesh.

“One of the hunter-born could scent the skin,” she said, “see if they catch a vampiric scent. Ransom's in the city, not sure about Elena—I'll call the Guild, ask if one of them can swing by.” Everything about this scene felt off. Another hunter's input would be welcome. “Blood splatter makes it clear he was killed here,” she murmured after making the request. “Pretty public at night.”

“Yeah, but this street's almost all daytime businesses, no restaurants, one hole-in-the-wall bar,” Santiago said, salt-dusted eyebrows heavy over eyes of faded brown. “Bar staff had cleaned up and were out of here by three thirty, according to the manager I just woke up. Launderette down the street opens at six thirty. Given the time our anonymous tipster called in the body, I'd put money on this going down between four and five.”

“Before it would've been light.” Honor nodded. “Otherwise, there's probably a few folks who'd cut through to the subway entrance.”

“Yeah, I'll have my men canvass the area tomorrow morning, see if we can catch any of the regular foot traffic.” He looked up as a shadow swept across them.

An instant later, an angel landed beside them, her wings the most stunning black, segueing to midnight blue and indigo, then to a gleaming shade that reminded Honor of the dawn, until the primaries were a shimmering white-gold. Tall, with lithe muscle over her frame, Elena had the kind of grace that came only with knowing how to move your body against opponents who were usually stronger and faster.

Honor had seen the photos, of course, but the reality of a fellow hunter with wings was surreal. “I know I'm staring,” she said into the hush that had fallen, “but, Elena, you have
wings
.”

Elena laughed, her eyes appearing silver in this light, her damp, near-white hair pulled back into a neat French braid. “I still wake up surprised some days,” she said, her face losing its shine when she turned toward Santiago. “I'll check the scent.” Those incredible wings spread out on the dirty street as she knelt on the asphalt.

Elena didn't appear to worry about it, peeling back the tarp to examine the neck, then the thigh wound. “No scent on him that might possibly be vampiric.” Her voice was decisive. “I'd expect something strong, given how long the attacker had to have spent with the victim.” She glanced up at Honor, frown lines marring the deep gold of her skin. “This one's weird. Human with filed-down teeth, maybe?”

It was the cue Honor's mind needed, flicking back to a short article in a Guild newsletter she'd read while in the hospital. “Santiago, can we move him just enough that I can see the back of his right shoulder?”

“Yeah, no problem.” Placing his gloved hands under the body, he shifted it to the side. Elena quickly gloved up, too, so she could help hold the body as Honor went around to push up the victim's T-shirt. Neither the cop nor the winged hunter said a word, but Honor could taste the tension on her tongue, it was so pervasive.

Deciding to pretend she hadn't noticed what was clearly a private rift, she managed to bare the victim's shoulder. “Damn, I didn't really think I'd find it.”

Two heads twisted around to examine her discovery. It was a small tattoo—the letter
V
in a ring with a wing coming out from each side. Elena scowled. “I've never seen that.”

“That edition of the Guild newsletter came out while you were off growing wings.”

“You actually read the newsletter? I thought people like you were urban legends.”

“Kinda just saw it out of the corner of my eye,” she said with a grin that felt natural. “This ‘movement' ”—she tapped the tattoo—“apparently originated in London. Looks like it's crossed the Atlantic.”

Lowering the body back down, Santiago rose to his feet, his joints creaking like old timbers. “Tell me about this.”

Honor stood, too, aware of Elena pulling her wings tight to her back as she followed. “My info is out of date, but it's an underground clique started by older teens and people in their early twenties. They emulate the ‘vampire lifestyle.' ” Shaking her head, she looked down at the lump beneath the tarp, saddened by the loss of a life hardly begun. “Mostly it's an excuse to have sex.”

“Aren't most things at that age?” Santiago muttered.

Honor hadn't ever been that young, couldn't imagine such innocence. “Yes, it's fairly harmless—except some of the adherents take it one step further and drink blood from one another.”