Angel's Blood (Guild Hunter 1)

For a single fleeting second, she thought she saw shock shadow his expression, but then that familiar arrogance looked back at her. "It was worth a try." He shrugged. "You can't say you didn't enjoy it."

She was so mad she didn't stop to think, to consider why she'd come here. Giving another scream, she rushed him. To her surprise, she got in a few good licks before he grabbed her arms and forced her against a wall.

His wings spread out to block her view of the room and it wasn't until he growled, "Leave us!" that she realized someone else had entered.

"Yes, sire."

Vampire. Dmitri.

And she'd been so f**king disoriented, so filled with manufactured lust turned into rage, that she hadn't heard him enter. "I'm going to kill you!" Her sense of violation had her humiliatingly close to tears. She should've expected such tactics from Raphael but she hadn't. Which made her an A-grade moron. "Let me go!"

He looked down at her, the blue of his eyes suddenly dark-as if a storm had rolled in. "No. In this state, you'll force me to hurt you."

For a second her heart kicked. He cared. She screamed again. "Get out of my head!"

"I am not in your head, Guild Hunter."

The use of the formal title was a verbal slap, one that brought her back to her senses. Instead of responding with the blood-fury boiling inside her, she took several deep breaths and tried to go to that calm place in her mind, the same place she went to whenever the memories of Ariel-No, she couldn't return there. Why wouldn't the past leave her alone today?

Another deep breath.

The scent of the sea, cool, crisp, powerful.

Raphael.

She opened her eyes. "I'm fine."

He waited several long seconds before releasing her. "Go. We'll discuss this later."

Her hand itched to go for a weapon but she simply turned on her heel and walked out. She had no intention of dying-not until she'd carved out Raphael's lying eyes and thrown them in the deepest, dirtiest cesspool she could find.

As soon as he heard the elevator doors close, Raphael called down to security. "Don't lose her. Ensure she stays safe."

"Yes, sire," was Dmitri's response, but Raphael heard the edge of disbelief.

He hung up without responding to the unasked question. Why had he allowed the hunter to live after she attacked him?

Is rape what turns you on?

His mouth tightened, his knuckles whitening as he fisted his hands. He'd done and been accused of many things through the ages. But never had he taken a woman against her will. Never. He hadn't done so today either.

But something had happened.

It was why he'd allowed her to assault him-she'd needed to vent her rage, and his disgust with himself was such that he'd welcomed the blows. There were some taboos that should never be broken. That he'd crossed a bright line he'd laid down centuries ago made him wonder about his own mental state. He knew his bloodstream was clear-he'd been tested yesterday-so this wasn't a result of the toxin putrefying his mind, sending his powers out of control.

Which left him with the unknown.

He swore in a low, ancient language long dead. He couldn't ask Neha, the Queen of Poisons. She'd see a weakness and immediately move to strike. None of the Cadre who might know the answer could be trusted in this except for Lijuan and Elijah. Lijuan had no interest in petty power. She'd gone too far, changed into something not wholly of this world. Elijah, Raphael wasn't sure about, but the other male was the scholar among them.

The problem was, Lijuan eschewed modern conveniences like the phone. She lived in a mountain compound hidden deep within China. He'd either have to fly to her or . . . His fist tightened even further. He couldn't leave his city while Uram roamed. Which left only one real choice.

As he turned to stride out, his eye fell on the message tube Elena had left behind. Destiny's Rose was an ancient treasure, one he'd earned as a young angel in the service of an archangel of ages long past. Legend said that it had been created by the combined power of the first Cadre. Raphael didn't know the truth of that, but it was undeniably priceless. He'd given it to Elena for reasons he didn't entirely understand. But she would have it. It bore her name now.

Grabbing the tube, he headed up to the penthouse and, specifically, to the room of pure black in the dead center. The human covens would see that room as evil. They saw darkness as evil. But sometimes, darkness was nothing more than a tool, neither good nor evil.

It was the soul of the man using the tool that changed things. Raphael's hand clenched on the message tube. For the first time in centuries, he wasn't sure who he was. Not good. He'd never been that. But neither had he been evil . . . until today.

Poison

They were fools, all of them. They thought he was going to die.

He laughed, despite the pain that sliced through his eyes and into his body, agony that threatened to turn his bowels to water, his bones to so much pulp. He laughed until it was the only sound in the universe, the only truth.

Oh, no, he wasn't going to die. He was going to survive this trial they called poison. A lie. An effort to consolidate their own power. Not only was he going to survive, he was going to come out of it a god. And when he was done, the Cadre of Ten would tremble and the earth run dark with rivers of blood.

Rich, nourishing, sensual . . . blood.

Chapter 12

Elena walked out the Tower door and kept going, ignoring the taxi standing by. An incandescent anger, richer, deeper, more deadly than anything she'd ever before felt, fired through her nerve endings, causing pain but also keeping her alive, keeping her going.

The bastard, the goddamn bastard!

Tears pricked. She refused to let them rise. To do that would be to admit that she'd expected something more from Raphael, something human.

Catching a familiar scent, she spun on her heel, knife in hand. "Go home, vamp." Her voice was molten fury.

Dmitri gave a courtly bow. "Be that I could do as my lady asks. Unfortunately"-he straightened, his shades reflecting her own angry image back at her-"I have other orders."

"Do you always do as your master commands?"

His lips thinned. "I stay with Raphael out of loyalty."

"Yeah, right. Like a little puppy dog." She dug in her claws, in the mood to draw blood. "Do you sit up and beg when he asks, too?"

Dmitri was suddenly in front of her, having moved so fast he was gripping her knife hand before she could draw breath. "Don't push me, hunter. I'm the head of Raphael's security force. If it were up to me, you'd be strung up in chains, screaming as your flesh was flayed off your bones."