She thought of him here in his bunker, protected from a world that had discarded him when he became less than perfect. Except—“You have far more courage than I ever will, V.” Abandoned in an institution by his family, he’d literally made himself through the sheer, stubborn refusal to surrender.
“I was a kid when this happened,” he said, voice raw. “I had a lot of time to get over the self-pity as I lay rotting in that hospital bed, so don’t give me kudos I don’t deserve.”
Honor shook her head, but kept her silence. Then she asked what she’d come down here to ask, though the horror of it continued to be a jagged brick crushing her chest from the inside out. “I need you to do a search.” Anger and panic and nausea roiled in her stomach. “For images or video clips of me.”
Vivek’s eyes flared with a rage so deep she might’ve been startled if she hadn’t known he was hunter-born—wheelchair bound or not, he had the same instincts as the rest of the Guild. Now, turning to focus on his computers, he began to issue vocal commands so fast across so many different screens that she couldn’t keep track.
A drop of ice trickled down her spine as she watched the hits come in one on top of the other. Swallowing the bile burning her throat, she forced herself to wait until he’d completed the search. “Show me.”
Image after image filled the screens.
She scanned every single page of results, with Vivek doing a double check. “Is that it?”
“Yes. I dug down as far as you can go, used multiple and wide-ranging search terms.”
Shuddering, she collapsed into a chair. “They’re all file photos released when I disappeared, or candid shots taken after my rescue.”
Vivek continued to talk to his computers for the next ten minutes as he checked and rechecked. “Net’s clean, Honor. Whatever images the bastards took, they haven’t uploaded them.” A gleam in his eye. “I’d say they’re too scared of the Tower.”
“They’re right to be.” She should’ve been happy, but finding Valeria and discovering Tommy’s identity had only reinforced the fact that the others who had treated her like a piece of meat were out there walking around, mocking her by living their lives free of terror or fear. “I won’t stop,” she said so low that it didn’t reach Vivek, her hand fisting on her thigh. “And neither will Dmitri.” A reminder that she had someone infinitely more dangerous and relentless on her side than any of Valeria’s sick friends.
“I don’t intend to break you, Honor. I intend to seduce you.”
Of course, that man also wanted to take a bite out of her. Not a little bite either. No, Dmitri wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than total, carnal surrender.
Nine hours after he’d last seen Honor, with night blanketing the world, Dmitri had just finished speaking to Galen via a satellite link when Venom strode into the room. “Sorrow slipped her security.” The vampire had had no trouble switching to Holly’s new name—perhaps because he’d once embraced a new identity of his own. “At least an hour ago.”
Dmitri didn’t swear. “I’ll find her.” He’d also be having a chat with the guards, because while Sorrow was highly intelligent and not quite human, she was also less than a quarter of a century old to their hundred and fifty–plus.
Venom shook his head, his hair falling across his forehead. “Look,” he said, shoving it back with an impatient hand, “you’re dealing with this other situation. I’ll—”
“No. She’s my responsibility.” Elena had tracked her, but he was the one who’d coaxed her out of that tiny guard shack where she’d been hiding, her entire body encrusted with blood. “I know the places she goes.”
Venom didn’t budge, his willingness to stand up to the others in the Seven part of the reason he’d been accepted into the group in the first place. “You’re getting too close, Dmitri. If . . .” The vampire’s black pupils contracted, hard points against the searing green of his irises. “If she has more of Uram in her than she has of her humanity, execution might become necessary.”
“That won’t be a problem.” He’d broken the neck of his own son, after all.
“It will be all right, Misha. I promise.” He told the lie with a smile, kissed his son on the forehead, that fine baby-soft skin so hot against his lips. “Papa will make it all right.”
The Ferrari got several “oh, yeahs!” from the boys hanging out at the curb when he slid it into a No Parking spot in front of a dingy little building with a neon sign proclaiming it The Blood Den. Since the number plate made it clear the car belonged to Dmitri, he didn’t bother with warnings. Anyone stupid enough to touch his car deserved what was coming to him.
A wide-eyed bouncer who outweighed Dmitri by two hundred pounds—and who wouldn’t be able to stop him for so much as a second should Dmitri find himself annoyed—opened the door to the club before Dmitri reached it.
“Five-foot-four woman of Asian descent,” he said to the shaven-headed male. “Black hair streaked with pink, brown eyes”—for the moment at least—“pasty skin.” Sorrow shunned the sun, not because it hurt her but because she thought she was a creature who belonged in the dark.
“I noticed a chick going into one of the booths with a guy when I went in for a break,” the bouncer said. “Could be her.”
Striding to the booth after the bouncer pointed it out, he pulled open the door to expose a twenty-something white male with his pants around his ankles. He had his hand on a turgid cock, was jerking off, a glazed look in his eyes.
Sorrow, sitting on the bench opposite, curved crimsonpainted lips. “Come to join the party?” A mocking question that held nothing of sex, though she was dressed in a tight black dress with spaghetti straps that ended high on her thighs, her legs covered in boots of liquid black.
Not saying a word, Dmitri slapped the male. The man blinked, looked down, back up. “Wha—”
“Get out.” Dmitri held open the door.
Cock deflating, the man pulled up his pants and left, stumbling over his feet in his rush to vacate the room. Shutting the door, Dmitri leaned on it and watched as Sorrow threw back what looked to be a large tequila before slamming the glass down with a look of disgust. “Do you know I can’t even get properly drunk?”
“Your metabolism’s altered.” Along with so many other things.
A bitter laugh. “Yeah, and I can make men whip out their cocks and jerk off in front of me. Great superpower, huh?”
In point of fact, it was. Along with that ring of hypnotic green around her eyes and perhaps a murderous insanity, Sorrow had gained the ability to mesmerize people for short periods. Right now, she could only get them to commit acts they were already predisposed to engage in, but Dmitri didn’t think it would stay that way for long. In the time since Uram had bitten her, infected her, the changes in Sorrow had progressed at phenomenal speed.
Aware of her frustration at his lack of overt anger, he watched as she uncurled from her seat, graceful as a cat, and walked over to press herself against him. “Why haven’t you ever bled or f**ked me, Dmitri?” Glittering eyes. Hard words. “Not good enough for you?”
“I don’t sleep with little girls.”
Her head snapped back, eyes heavy with makeup slamming into his. “I’m no child.”
Dmitri didn’t bother to argue the point. Instead, taking her hand, he opened the door.
She resisted. “I—”
“Enough,” he said in a quiet tone that sliced through the pulsating music as if it didn’t exist. “I cut small, precise pieces out of a vampire today.” Honor hadn’t realized that Valeria was missing most of her heart beneath her robe by the time Honor walked back into the room. “I’m planning to do a lot worse to another. So I wouldn’t mess with me.”
Sorrow sucked in a breath, but didn’t speak again until they were out on the street, the late spring air brisk enough to raise goose bumps on her arms. “How long did it take?” she asked in a voice that trembled.
“What?”
“To become . . . inhuman?”
“Three months after my Making was complete.” That was how long Misha had screamed and sobbed in the chains across from him, how long Caterina’s ashes had lain exposed to the elements beside those of her mother.
“I’m sorry, Ingrede.” Standing beside the burned-out shell of the cottage, his dead son’s body cradled in his arms, the most precious of burdens. “Forgive me.”
Striding to the Ferrari, he wrenched open the passengerside door. “Get in.”
Sorrow obeyed, her defiance crushed by the brutality of his mood. Suddenly she looked heartbreakingly young, but Dmitri wasn’t about to cut her any slack. She’d had over a year of it. “Using vampiric abilities on mortals without approval can get you sentenced to the earth.” The punishment involved being buried alive in a coffin, given only enough blood to survive.
Her lower lip quivered.
“My coat’s in the back.”
Twisting, she pulled it over herself, shrinking down in the seat. “Are you going to put me in the earth?”
“No. That particular penalty’s been taken off the books.” Raphael had done it for Elena, a gift from an archangel to his consort. “I’ve been tasked to come up with a replacement.”
Sorrow tugged his coat tighter around herself. “I’m sorry.” The hesitant, scared words of the child he’d called her.
Sighing, he drove them over the Harlem River and cut across Manhattan to traverse the George Washington Bridge, before bringing the car to a stop on a clifftop outlook that faced Manhattan. The cityscape was a spread of gemstones against the black of the sky, the angels sweeping across it cast in silhouette. “I’m putting you under Contract, Sorrow.” It was the only way to teach her control. “Doesn’t matter if you were Made without your consent, you won’t be free until I decide you’re not a risk.”