Elena didn’t lie; she didn’t say any one of them would make it out of this alive. Instead, she reassured Beth that the city’s defenses were strong, the evacuation a precaution. After hanging up, her sister marginally calmer, she returned to the young angelic squadron to which she’d been attached, their task to assist in the evacuation of the city’s most vulnerable.
Not strong enough to carry sick adults or older children across to hospitals outside Manhattan, she carried bundled-up babies and toddlers. The latter, despite their illnesses, grinned throughout each flight, not a lick of fear in their expressions. “Can we do that again?” a four-year-old asked when they landed, his cheeks bright red because he’d wanted to face the wind the entire time, despite her attempts to shelter him.
Bending down to hug his thin body, the IV port on his left hand appearing far too harsh for his delicate skin, she said, “Yes,” and hoped it was a promise she’d be alive to keep. “After we fight the bad people, I’ll come back and see you again.”
Then she passed him to the care of the nurse who waited, and she returned to carry across another child, the ambulances—road and air—reserved for those who needed the support of medical machinery. Tower, Guild, police, and corporate choppers were all pooled into the effort, while hunters drove the elderly, and those others who required special assistance, from point to point.
Most evacuees had friends and family with whom they could stay, and still others were invited in by kind neighbors in surrounding areas. However, for those who found themselves homeless, emergency services—acting in concert with the Tower—had set up temporary but snug housing facilities on Tower-owned land in nearby areas. The latter had been done well before the evacuation was announced, which spoke to the precision planning behind the entire operation.
Elena had never seen any evacuation proceed with such speed and lack of trouble—but then again, this was the evacuation of a healthy city into equally healthy areas. No natural disaster had blocked supply lines, damaged roads, or hit the workforce.
Forty-eight hours after it began, Manhattan was a ghost city.
Flying above the empty streets, the odd bit of paper fluttering on the pavement and a lone dog looking up at her, Elena felt a shiver crawl down her spine. The heart of her city was meant to be loud and noisy and full of people. Not that she believed they’d evacuated every single mortal—it was a sure bet some enterprising souls had managed to avoid the mass departure, but they were hidden ghosts, the landscape desolate.
Unable to bear passing over the deserted silence of Times Square, she angled to land at one of the air defense stations, the anti-wing guns primed and ready. Not far from her stood Dmitri, his attention on whatever was being said by a pair of vampires who were experts in using the weapon.
Raphael’s second looked no different from before he’d left the city, his presence darkly sexual with an undertone of deadly violence. But he’d come back with a hunter wife now at work as part of the combined Guild-Tower operations team—Honor wasn’t yet at full strength, but neither was she an ordinary new-Made vampire, her skin brushed with a shimmer of gold, her eyes a luminous jewel green, her mortal beauty honed as sharp as a blade.
The other hunter had laughed at Elena’s flabbergasted expression when they first came face-to-face. “I know, I know. It was a bit of a shock to me, too.” A deep smile, Honor still Honor. “But hey, I was Made by an archangel and feed solely from a dangerously sexy thousand-year-old vampire.”
“Is it weird?” The question was one Elena had only felt comfortable asking because Honor was a friend. “The blood drinking?”
Honor’s honey gold skin had turned a fascinating shade of pink. “Oh, um, no.”
“Oh, um, no?” Elena had teased, delighted to see Honor so happy after the horror the other woman had survived. “Dmitri clearly gives good . . . blood.”
“My husband,” a still pink but laughing Honor had said, her words holding an adorable possessiveness, “gives phenomenal . . . blood.”
Now, the husband in question finished his conversation with the two gunners and strode over. Even dressed in scuffed black boots, jeans of the same black, and a black T-shirt, his attention totally focused on the city’s defenses, no time for the insidious scent games he usually liked to play, there was something about Dmitri that whispered of sex—the bloody, painful kind.
“Are you free?”
She nodded at the curt question, having just finished her duties with the team assigned to make absolutely sure all the hospitals had been evacuated. “You have a job for me?” Dmitri would never be her friend, and she’d never see in him whatever it was that Honor saw, but when it came to protecting their city, they had no arguments.
“The Guild teams need a winged consult.” He pointed out another high-rise. “The two team leaders are up there.”
Demarco and Ransom looked up at the wash of wind generated by her wings. “I hear you guys asked for a consult,” she said, meeting Demarco’s light brown eyes first, because she didn’t want to see the coolness in Ransom’s.
“Ellie.” The rangy hunter grinned, streaky blond hair ruffled by the wind and long legs folded in a crouch in front of what appeared to be a chalk outline of the defensive perimeter. “Our own personal hunter angel.” Shifting, he showed her the front of his oatmeal-colored T-shirt. “Didjya know they’re selling these in Times Square?”
Groaning at the solid black silhouette of a gun and crossbow-toting female with wings, the name Elena emblazoned above the figure, and the words Hunter Angel below, she rubbed at her eyes. “God damn it, get rid of that monstrosity before I go blind.”
Demarco just grinned as she dropped her hands from her face to walk over and crouch between the two men. Then, when she couldn’t avoid it any longer, she dared look up at Ransom.
His expression as tentative as she felt, he gave her a lopsided smile. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she said, painfully relieved he wasn’t holding a grudge.
“Why are you two acting like moobs on a first date?” Demarco asked in open confusion. “Did you dump the librarian and the archangel and rub your naughty bits together? Man, it must’ve really sucked eggs if you’re avoiding eye contact.”
“Demarco,” Elena and Ransom growled together.
“And awkward moment over.” Demarco winked, his usual laid-back grin on his face. “Let’s talk angels, crossbows, and bullets.”