Angels' Blood (12 page)

His lips touched hers and she moaned. The hands on her hips tightened as he lifted her without apparent effort and began to kiss her in earnest. Fire traveled through the raw eroticism of the openmouthed kiss to curl her toes, coming to pool in the vee between her thighs. “Hot,” she whispered when he let her breathe. “Too hot.”

Ice silvered the air and it was a cool mist that surrounded her, seeping into her pores in a stroke of possession. “Better?” He kissed her again before she could answer, his tongue inside her, his body hard and perfect and—

The words were wrong. The thoughts were wrong.

Sara mattered.

Beth mattered.

She
mattered.

Raphael’s lips traveled down her neck and to the flesh exposed by the open buttons of her shirt. “Beautiful.”

She was a plaything.

To be toyed with and discarded.

Raphael could control her mind.

Giving a scream of pure rage, she kicked off him hard enough to send herself sprawling. The shock of pain as her tailbone connected with the floor snapped the final tendrils of a desire so visceral, so addictive, it made a fool out of her even now. “You bastard! Is rape what turns you on?”

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.”

And she’d been so fucking 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?

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.

Elena walked out the Tower door and kept going, ignor
ing 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.”

The erotic scent of him made the image even more barbaric. “Didn’t Raphael tell you to stop the scent games?” She dropped a knife down from her arm sheath and into the palm of her weaker hand. Weaker, not weak. All hunters could fight with both hands.

“That was last night.” He bent closer, the planes of his face exquisitely drawn, the curve of his lips touched with a hint of cruelty. “Today, he’s probably extremely pissed with you. He won’t mind if I take a discreet bite.” A hint of fang as he flashed her on purpose.

“Right here on the street?” she asked, looking up at the line of his throat, vividly conscious of the push of his erection.

He didn’t bother to glance around. “We’re near Archangel Tower. The streets belong to us.”

“But”—she smiled—“I. Fucking. Don’t!” Slashing out with her knife, she carved a line across his throat.

Blood sprayed in an arterial rush but she’d already dodged out of the way. Dmitri grabbed at his neck and fell to his knees, his shades falling away to display eyes blazing fire. She read her death in those eyes.

“Don’t be a baby,” she murmured, wiping the knife on the grass and sliding it back into the sheath. “We both know a vamp your age will recover within the next ten minutes.” A violent wave of vampire scent crashed into her senses. “And here come your flunkies to help you out. Nice talking to you, Dmitri darling.”

“Bitch.” It was a wet gurgle.

“Thanks.”

He actually smiled, hard, lethal, scary as hell. “I like bitches.” The words were already clearer, his healing progressing at a faster pace than she would’ve believed.

But it was the dark hunger in his tone that got to her. Damn kinky vampire had actually liked the knife.
Shit.
Turning her back to him, she ran. The second he healed, he’d come after her. And right now, she was worried less about being killed than about being seduced out of her fucking mind.

Dmitri might make her ache with need, but she didn’t want him when he wasn’t around to dose her with that scent of his. It was a compulsion, that scent, far stronger than any other she’d ever heard of. But that was hardly surprising given who he called sire.

Raphael had taken her between one breath and the next. She’d thought she’d learned to detect him, to pick up the odd sense of disconnection between mind and self that had accompanied his earlier attempts. But this time, there had been nothing. One second she was worrying about vampire serial killers, the next she was crawling all over him, trying to suck his tongue down her throat. If she hadn’t snapped out of it, she was pretty sure she’d have been sucking other things, too.

Her face flushed.

Not in anger, though that was there. In desire. In heat. She might not want Dmitri when he was out of range, but she wanted the archangel. That made her a candidate for the asylum, but under no circumstances did it excuse what he’d done.

An instant later, she passed out of the restricted Tower zone to hit busy city streets, but instead of slowing down, she pushed herself even harder. Reaching into her pocket as she ran, she pulled out a cell phone and pressed in an emergency code. “I need a retrieval,” she gasped as soon as someone answered. “Sending location.” She pressed a button, activating the special GPS widget—it would transmit her location to the Guild computers until she switched it off. Because she couldn’t stay in one place. The second she did, the game was over.

She kept an eye out for a taxi, but, of course, there were none in sight.

Two minutes later, tendrils of hunger snaked around her, searching, caressing. A sumptuous warmth bloomed in the pit of her stomach. Shoving a fist against that body part, she took in another gasp of air and made a hard left. High-class department stores zipped by, followed by the Zombie Den—the hangout of choice for the vamps and their whores.

Images of the erotic scenes she’d witnessed last night filled her head.

Opulent.

Sensual.

Seductive.

Not whores, addicts. And the worst thing was, she couldn’t blame them. If Raphael ever got her in bed—not a chance since she was going to cut off his balls the first opportunity she got—she’d probably crave him to the end of her days. Infuriated, she pumped up her arms and swerved around a kid on a skateboard.

“Where’s the vamp?” the kid called out, jumping off his board in excitement. “Dude . . .”

Oh, fuck! She glanced over her shoulder and saw Dmitri gaining on her. The blood on his shirt was a scarlet flower but his neck was fine, his pretty face wiped clean. Snapping back her head, she darted into traffic, crossing the road to the blaring of horns, curses, and several excited screams. A tourist started snapping photos. Great. He’d probably get a shot of her being vampire-bit right before Dmitri turned her into a begging, crawling thing concerned with sex alone.

Her gun was suddenly in her hand. Knives were her weapon of choice, but if she was going to stop the son of a bitch before he got to her, she’d have to shoot him in the heart. There was a very slight chance she might actually kill him that way, and if she did, she’d be brought up on charges. Unless, of course, she could prove harmful intent. She could see it now.

“See, Your Honor, he was going to fuck me silly, make me like it.”

Yeah, that would fly. With her luck, she’d end up with some old fogey of a judge who thought like her father—that women were pawns, spreading their legs their only talent. Fury boiled through her in a second violent wave. She was about to turn, her finger already on the trigger, when a motorcycle screeched to a stop in front of her. It was pure black, as were the rider’s clothes and helmet. But there was a discreet gold
G
on the gas tank.