Archangel's Blade (Guild Hunter 4)

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.”

Having unzipped and pulled off her boots during the drive, she curled her legs under her on the seat. Tiny as she was, it didn’t take much effort. “Will you teach me what I need to know?” A plea.

“No. Venom will take care of it.” The girl was becoming dependent on him.

“I’m cold.”

“I know, Misha. You’re being a very brave boy.”

“They hurt Mama and Rina.” Valiant attempts to fight his sobs. “They hurt Mama and Rina, Papa.”

The sound of Misha’s cries still haunted him. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, add another voice to that. “Venom will also start teaching you how to control your talent.” Though Sorrow didn’t know it, Venom’s ability to mesmerize put hers in the shade. “I expect you to follow his commands.”

“I will.” A pause filled with things unsaid after that quiet acknowledgment. “What am I becoming?” she asked at last.

He could’ve lied to her, given her false hope, but that would only get her dead. Turning, he reached forward to tuck a wing of slick raven hair, streaked with color stolen by the night, behind her ear. She flinched and he knew she’d felt the cold blade of his anger. “No one knows. But the one thing I will not allow you to become is a problem. Do you understand?”

Her throat moved as she swallowed. “Yes.” A whisper before she turned her face into the hand he still had brushing her cheek. “I’m scared, Dmitri.”

“Papa, I’m scared.”

Sorrow wasn’t Misha, small and defenseless, but she might as well have been. And so, in spite of his vow to maintain his distance, he didn’t tell her that she should be afraid, that almost everyone believed her chances of surviving this were beyond limited. Instead, he caressed the dark silk of her hair and thought of the soft black curls he’d once felt under his palm as his son’s body lay wracked with convulsions in his arms.

“Please! No! Stop!”

Honor shoved off the sheets and rolled out of the bed, her heart thudding triple time. A glance at the clock told her it had been a bare three hours since she’d collapsed, after having worked on the tattoo past midnight. Trouble was, she kept remembering what Valeria, Tommy, and their friends had done to her.

Except that nightmare . . . she could’ve sworn it had had nothing to do with the pit. Maybe it had been an echo of the childhood night terrors that had been the reason she’d never been adopted, though infants were always in demand. Apparently, she’d screamed and screamed and screamed, until she wore herself out—only to start again as soon as she woke. The screaming had continued until she was four or five, after which she’d tended to wake herself up when they began and spend the rest of the night fighting sleep.

Abandonment issues, one child psychologist had called it. Honor wasn’t so sure. What she’d felt when she woke from those childhood nightmares had been too huge, too vast, a terrible darkness filled with utter desolation. The same thing that had her throat so thick now, her heart pounding deep and hard enough to bruise. Rubbing her hand over her chest to dispel the feeling, she headed to the shower.

Dressed in fresh clothes afterward, she picked up the phone and input a number she’d never expected to use at four a.m. on a cool spring morning, the sky a smoky black broken by a scattering of light-filled offices in the high-rises.

A dark male voice came on, asking her to leave a message.

Hanging up, she rubbed her palms over her face and went to spread the blown-up photographs of the tattoos on the small dining table beside the window. She’d made a breakthrough, or what she’d thought was a breakthrough, just before she’d fallen exhausted into bed. Now, her mind clearer, notwithstanding the nightmares, she began to retrace her line of thought.

Yes, that was definitely it. The key. Or part of the key.

She didn’t know how long she’d been working but her writing pad was covered with several pages of notes, when there was a knock on her door. Frowning, she glanced at the wall clock.

Half past four.

Body tensing with a strange exhilaration because it could only be one person, she picked up her gun and looked through the peephole.

12

She slid away the gun—odd, given who she was about to let in—and opened the door.

“You called?” Dmitri was wearing a white shirt open at the collar and black suit pants, his hair tumbled just enough to make her think he’d been running his hands through it.

It made her own fingers curl into her palms. “Come in,” she said, a vivid image of what he might look like sated and lazy in bed forming full-fledged in her mind. Though she knew Dmitri was far more likely to be a lover who would take total control even in the most intimate of dances, her mind insisted on seeing him sprawled relaxed on his back, a teasing smile on his face—the way a man might look at a familiar lover.

The idea was so tempting that she had to force herself to ignore it, to remember the truth of him as a sophisticated vampire who’d tasted every sin—and who wouldn’t stay with the same woman beyond the time it took to satisfy his curiosity.

“I married her.”

One woman at least, had awakened more in him than a fleeting sexual attraction. Honor had the most unquenchable desire to know everything about that woman, a hundred thousand questions she wanted to ask. However, for one question she needed no answer: it was patent that Dmitri had spoken his marriage vows long, long ago. That man didn’t exist anymore, had likely not existed for centuries.

“I have something to show you,” she said, unable to understand the strange ache inside of her.

He followed her to the table, listened in silence.

“I’m near certain,” she said after explaining the process by which she’d come to her conclusion, “this is a name.” She touched a particular grouping of symbols. “The sample I have to work with is so small that it’s possible I could be way off, but I think the sound is something like Asis or Esis.”