Archangel's Shadows

“Yes, the doctors say she’ll make a full recovery.” Ashwini patted the brick cladding. “This is a great place.”

“Isn’t it? My aunt left it to me.” Lower lip quivering, Penelope hugged herself, her distinctive gold and diamanté nails vivid against the dark blue of the robe. “I can’t believe Giorgio did those things, hurt Brooke. I loved him.”

She was, Ashwini thought, a pathologically good liar. She was also now a step outside the doorway, having instinctively followed Ashwini when she shifted back. Continuing to smile, Ashwini leaned in toward her and said, “I can blow a hole through your gut in the time it takes for you to scream, so don’t.”

Penelope froze midbreath, her mouth open like that of a blowfish.

Remaining close to block the expression on Penelope’s face from the camera, she said, “Is Giorgio inside that house?” She dug the gun into Penelope’s side when the other woman didn’t answer quickly enough, no mercy in her with the memory of Brooke’s battered face at the forefront of her mind.

“Y-yes.”

“Who else?”

A twist of her lips. “Nothing but two whores I picked up off the street.”

Ashwini flicked off the safety. “Don’t lie to me. I don’t like you and I’ll have no hesitation in putting a bullet through your pretty face to mess it up.”

Smugness wiped away, Penelope whimpered. “You can’t do that.”

“Self-defense. Who do you think the Guild is going to believe? Me or a dead blood junkie who sold out her sister?”

“Brooke isn’t my sister! She’s a piece of trash who shamed our master.”

“One last chance.” Ashwini shoved in the gun hard enough that it would bruise, her voice ice-cold. “Who else is inside the house?”

Goose bumps on her skin, Penelope crumbled. “The other master,” she whispered. “The old one.”

“Who watches the surveillance feed?”

“The master,” she said. “He’ll see you.” She began to smirk.

Ashwini reached out as if to hug Penelope and stabbed two fingers into a particular part of her throat. It made the brunette’s eyes go wide, a retching sound escaping her before she slumped. Slinging an arm around the dazed woman, she gave up any attempt at stealth and shoved the door fully open to see no one lying in wait.

She dumped a moaning Penelope in the hallway and, pulling out the belt of the woman’s elaborate robe, used it to hog-tie her, hands behind her back and ankles lashed to her wrists. A slash with one of her blades and she had another piece of the robe to use as a gag. “Wouldn’t want you calling out to your precious Giorgio at the wrong time,” she muttered. Finished, she set Penelope on her side to make sure she could breathe.

The entire operation took her under a minute and her skin crawled the whole time, but she figured Giorgio was too much of a coward to come at her straight-on. No, the pencil-dicked bastard would be hiding somewhere, ready to ambush her like he’d ambushed the women who had trusted him.

Ignoring the daggers Penelope was throwing at her with her eyes, she slid away the knife she’d used to cut up the robe and pulled out her secondary gun from an ankle sheath. Both guns held out, she took a step toward the first closed door on this floor.

•   •   •

Having scrambled up the side of the building, Janvier got to the old-fashioned bay window and looking through the parted curtains, confirmed the room beyond was empty. He could’ve broken a pane to get in, but the noise might alert anyone up here—so he used a trick he’d learned from a jewel thief, and broke the hinges instead, using a sharp blade and vampiric strength.

Grabbing the falling half of the window, he lowered it quietly to the floor, then slid in, his kukris in hand the instant his feet touched the carpet. One ear open for Ash, he scanned the room to find it comparatively bare, though there were a few feminine accoutrements lying about.

Including a pretty yellow scarf with purple butterflies half hanging out of a drawer.

His mind flashed to the photo of Felicity with her friends, all with cocktails in hand . . . and Felicity with that scarf around her neck.

This had to be where she, Lilli, and the other victims had lived before Giorgio put them in the crates. The place where they’d tried to become “good enough” to move into Giorgio’s Vampire Quarter house. Clamping down his rage, and taking a quick look around to make sure he wasn’t missing anything, he stepped out into the corridor.

To the left was what proved to be a bathroom when he pushed the door open. It, too, was empty. As was the room next to it. That room had a tiny decorative balcony on the side not visible from the street, but it was so small he could see no one was on it from a glance through the sliding doors. That left the right-hand side of the floor.

It had two doors, and the first one was locked. Sliding away one of his blades, he took a small metal wire from his pocket, another little trick he’d learned from his larcenous friend. Ten seconds later, there was a small click that said he was in. The sound was tiny, but Janvier knew some older vamps had hearing that was preternaturally acute. Putting away the wire, he waited, listening at the door.

Sounds from within, but they were odd, muffled.

He very carefully nudged the door open while keeping his body out of the way. When there was no other sound, he pushed it fully open and slammed his back against the corridor wall again.

More muffled sounds, louder now.