“Have you never had a woman create such a chink in your armor?” One of Illium’s feathers fell toward the ground but was whipped away and over the water before it could touch the unforgiving concrete. “In all the years I’ve known you, never have you had a lover on whom you placed a true claim.”
“I will watch the roads for you, Dmitri.”
Illium was just over five hundred years old to Dmitri’s near thousand. He didn’t know anything of what had gone on before—Raphael alone knew. “No,” Dmitri said and it was a lie he told with centuries of expertise. “Weakness gets a man killed.”
Illium blew out a breath as they reached the flame red Ferrari the angel coveted but couldn’t drive because of his wings, and said, “Do not lose your humanity, Dmitri. It’s what makes you.” He flared out those wings of impossible beauty and rose into the air with a grace and strength that foretold what he might one day become.
Watching the angel fly up into the star-studded skies above a Manhattan stretching awake for the dark beat of night, until he was a sweeping shadow against the glittering black, Dmitri’s lips curved into a grim smile. “I lost my humanity a long time ago, Bluebell.”
Honor was in the subterranean depths of Guild Academy’s main building, peering at an illuminated fourteenth-century text to do with one Amadeus Berg, legendary hunter and explorer, when her cell phone rang. Jumping up at the abrupt burst of sound, she grabbed it from where she’d placed it on the table beside her keys. “Sara?” she said, having recognized the number flashing on the screen as that of the Guild Director’s personal cell phone.
“Honor.” Crisp. No nonsense. Sara. “Where are you?”
“Rare books section of the Academy library.” Dimly lit in deference to the age of the books stored here, and kept at a precise ambient temperature, it had become a refuge, a place few ventured.
“Good. You’re not too far.” The sound of papers rustling. “Tower needs a consult and you’re particularly well qualified. When you—”
Honor didn’t hear the rest of the director’s words because her ears crashed with a thundering rush of blood, her face heating until it felt as if her skin would peel off from the burn, leaving her flesh exposed to the cruel air. “Sara,” she blurted out, fingers clenching on the edge of the desk, the bone showing white against skin that had once been a light brown touched by sunshine but was now dull, pasty, “you know I can’t.” Her terror was greater than any pitiful surviving shred of pride.
“Yes, you can.” Sara’s tone was gentle but firm. “I won’t allow you to bury yourself at the Academy forever.”
Her hand squeezed the phone, her heart racing so fast and jagged it hurt. “And if I want to be buried?” she asked, finding the will to fight in the same bone-crushing fear that had sweat beading along her spine.
“Then I’d have to get tough and remind you that you are still under contract as an active hunter.”
Honor’s knees collapsed, crumpling her into a chair. The Guild was the only home she knew, her fellow hunters her family. “I’m an instructor.” It was a last-ditch attempt to claw her way out of this.
“No, you’re not.” A denunciation no less ruthless for being soft voiced. “You haven’t taught a single class in the months you’ve been there.”
“I’ll—”
“Honor.” A single, final word.
She fisted her hand on the desk, staring unseeing at the haunting blues and passionate reds of the illuminated manuscript she’d dropped with a shocking lack of care on the polished wood. “Tell me the details.”
Sara blew out a breath. “Part of me wants to wrap you in cotton wool and keep you safe and warm where nothing can hurt you,” she said with a fierceness that betrayed the generous heart beneath that tough exterior, “but the other part of me knows I’d be helping to cripple you and I refuse to do that.”
Honor flinched. Not because the words were harsh, but because they were true. She wasn’t whole, hadn’t been whole for the past ten months. “I don’t know if there’s enough of me left to scrape up, Sara.” Sometimes, she wasn’t sure she wasn’t still in that filthy pit stained with blood, sweat, and . . . other bodily fluids, that her current life wasn’t an illusion created by a fragmented mind.
Then Sara spoke and the very razor of her words was a welcome reinforcement that this was the truth. Because surely if she’d dreamed herself into a fantasy to escape the brutal reality, she wouldn’t have made the Guild Director so unyielding?
“Ransom and Ashwini didn’t risk their lives to pull you out just so you could turn around and give up.” A reminder of the hands that had undone her bonds, the arms that had helped haul her up into the painful light. “Find the pieces and stitch yourself back together.”
Honor’s stomach was a churning mess by now, her free hand clenching and unclenching compulsively. “Is this where I salute and say, yes, sir?” Her words held no bite, because she remembered waking time and time again in the hospital to see Sara sitting beside her, a ferocious, protective force.
“No,” the director replied, “you say you’re heading up to get your ass into a cab. It’s only half past eight so you shouldn’t have any problems flagging one down.”
Chills crawled up her spine; perspiration shimmered on her upper lip. “Is it an angel I’m meeting?” Please say yes, she begged in silent desperation. Please.
“No, your meet is with Dmitri.”
An image of a man with skin of dark honey and a face that was cruel in its beauty. “He’s a vampire.” It came out a near soundless whisper. The vampire as far as this city, hell, this country was concerned.
Sara didn’t say anything for a long time. When she spoke, she asked a single shattering question. “Are you happy, Honor?”
Happy? She didn’t know what happiness was anymore. Maybe she’d never known, though she’d thought she’d learned something of it by watching the biological children in the foster homes she’d been shuttled around after she left the orphanage at five. Now . . . “I exist.”
“Is it enough?”
She uncurled her fingers with effort, saw the half-moons carved into her palms, red and angry. The Guild had paid for a counselor, would continue to pay for one as long as she needed it. Honor had gone to three sessions before realizing she was never going to speak to the lovely, patient woman who was used to dealing with hunters.
Instead, she tried to stay awake, tried not to remember.
Fangs sinking into her br**sts, her inner thighs, her neck, aroused bodies rubbing themselves against her as she whimpered and begged.
She’d been strong at first, determined to survive and slice the bastards to ribbons.
But they’d had her for two months.
A lot could be done to a hunter, to a woman, in two months.
“Honor?” Sara’s voice, touched with worry. “Look, I’ll get someone else. I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard so soon.”
A reprieve. But it seemed she had some tiny remnant of pride left after all—because she found her mouth opening, the words coming out without her conscious volition. “I’ll be on my way in ten minutes.”
It was only after she hung up that she realized she’d picked up a pen at some stage . . . and written Dmitri’s name over and over again on the writing pad she’d been using for her notes. Her fingers spasmed, dropping the pen.
It was starting again.
2
The Tower, filled with light, dominated the Manhattan skyline, a cloud-piercing structure from which the archangel Raphael ruled his territory. Honor hitched her laptop bag over her shoulder, after paying the cabbie, and looked up. Their wings outlined against a night sky scattered with diamonds, angel after angel came in to land as others departed. She couldn’t discern anything beyond the haunting beauty of their silhouettes, but up close, they were as inhuman as they were stunning—though word in the Guild was, you hadn’t seen inhuman until you’d found yourself face-to-face with Raphael.
Given their disparate skills, and therefore assignments, Honor had known Elena only in passing, couldn’t imagine how the other hunter handled having an archangel for a lover. Of course, right this minute, she’d rather deal with Raphael than the man she was here to meet . . . the man who was both a nightmare and a dark, seductive dream.
Forcing herself to look away from the illusionary escape of the skies, she gritted her teeth and kept her eyes focused straight ahead as she walked down the drive to the Tower entrance—manned by a vampire dressed in a razor-sharp black suit and wraparound sunglasses. Her throat dried up the second she stopped in front of him, her gut twisted, and for an instant, dark spots filled her vision.
No. No. She would not faint in front of a vampire.
Biting down hard enough on her tongue that tears sprang into her eyes, she resettled the strap of the laptop bag and looked into those sunglasses to see her own face reflected back at her. “I have a meeting with Dmitri.” Her voice was soft, but it didn’t shake and that was a victory in itself.
The vampire reached out to open the door with a strong hand. “Follow me.”
She knew she’d been surrounded by the almost-immortals from the instant she entered the secure zone around the Tower, but it had been easier to lie to herself about that fact when she couldn’t see them. That was no longer an option. The one in front of her, his shoulders covered by that perfectly fitted suit jacket, his skin holding a cinnamon tone that spoke of the Indian subcontinent, was simply the closest. Several stood near the corners of the foyer of gold-shot gray marble, sleek predators on guard. Then there was the pretty woman sitting at the reception desk in spite of the late hour.
The receptionist smiled at Honor, her almond-shaped brown eyes holding a welcoming expression. Honor tried to smile back, because the rational part of her knew that all vampires weren’t the same, but her face felt as if it had been frozen into place. Instead of forcing it, she concentrated on keeping herself together on the most basic of levels.