Archangel's Blade (Guild Hunter 4)

He stared out of the now-clear windscreen, but whatever he saw had nothing to do with the verdant grass beyond. “Yes.” Then, when she thought he’d add nothing else, he said, “My wife . . . and mortal.”

Dmitri’s business with Sorrow took only a few minutes, and Honor had the feeling he was checking up on the young woman more than anything else. “I haven’t forgotten,” she said to Sorrow when Dmitri stepped aside to speak to Venom. “About the self-defense lessons.”

“I can wait.” Sorrow’s expression was fierce, her eyes vivid with a ring of brilliant green. “I hope you find each and every one of the bastards who hurt you and make them scream.”

Back in the car, she turned to the vampire beside her—the vampire who had once had a wife. A wife he’d loved with such devotion that he protected her memory with vicious strength even now. His expression had shuttered the instant after he spoke of Ingrede’s mortality. It was clear he regretted telling her even that much.

His loyalty . . . it staggered her.

Honor had never been loved like that, never even believed it possible. “Venom found something?” she said, conscious he’d give her nothing more about Ingrede. Not now.

“The first one of the vampires Jewel named,” he said, his tone once again that of the most sophisticated of creatures, “has a long-term male lover and has never shown any interest in women.” A shake of his head that made his hair gleam blue-black in the piercing sunlight. “I’m not sure how that slipped past me, but quite aside from that, the vampire is far too ‘bourgeois,’ as Valeria would’ve put it, to have been offered an invitation.”

“Translation: he’s happy with his lover and doesn’t need to abuse someone else to beat the boredom.”

Dmitri gave a clipped nod. “The second individual did nothing of note while under surveillance, but from what I know of his habits, he may well have been involved. I’ve sent Illium to question him.”

“Illium seems far too pretty to be dangerous.” Dmitri’s male beauty, by contrast, was a darker, edgier thing.

“No one ever expects him to take out a blade and slice off their balls,” he said with lethal amusement in his tone as he drove them toward the George Washington Bridge. “He does it with such grace, too.”

Honor wasn’t shocked, because while what she’d said was true, she’d long ago learned that appearances could be deceptive. “Did you cultivate your reputation on purpose?”

He laughed and it was a thickness of fur across her br**sts, her body seeming to have become more sensitized to the scent lure. “I was too busy soaking battlefields in blood and f**king women who were drawn to violence to cultivate anything.”

Honor didn’t even consider letting it go, because as of this morning, they belonged to each other, even if that belonging would be a fleeting thing. “You’re so angry.” Honed and blindingly sharp, that anger was a cold, cold thing. “Tell me why.”

A long, still silence. “My memories are my penance, Honor. To share them is pointless.”

“I’m never going to be an ornament, or a bedmate content to stay in that sphere.” She couldn’t be, not when the depth of her draw toward him was nothing sensible, nothing rational.

“And I,” he said, reaching out to grip her thigh, “am never going to be—”

“—manageable,” she interrupted in a sudden burst of humor. “I guess I can’t say I didn’t know that going in.”

Dmitri gave her the strangest look as they stopped for a red light. “Why choose that word?”

“It seemed to fit.” Realizing there was no way he’d reveal any vulnerability until he trusted her on a level it would take time to develop, she decided to return to their earlier topic of discussion. “What about the third vampire?”

Taking his eyes off her after another probing look, he eased the Ferrari onto the bridge. “That’s who we’re going to see—she’s out in Stamford,” he said, explaining why they were heading back into Manhattan. “It appears she’s been bunkered down in her home for at least five days. Been feeding off blood junkies who come to her door.”

“I don’t know that term.” Though she’d heard “vamp-whore” used to describe those who were addicted to the kiss of a vampire.

“Blood junkies come in pairs,” Dmitri explained. “The only way they can get aroused enough to have sex is if a vampire feeds from either one or both in turn. So in effect it’s a threesome—only a subset of the Made finds this even mildly attractive.”

Honor nodded. “The majority of mortals don’t come close to the beauty bestowed by vampirism.”

“The deal breaker is that the vampire is relegated to being a conduit, not the center.”

No old vampire would enjoy that. “The woman we’re going to see—”

“Jiana. She’s not known to be into the junkie scene, but there’s no doubt she’s been indulging lately,” he said, making his way to the Bronx once they cleared the bridge. “Look in the dashboard.”

Reaching forward, she opened the compartment to reveal an envelope. Inside were a number of large, glossy black-and-white photographs. “When were these taken?”

“Early this morning.”

The first one was of a fresh-faced twosome, blond and scrubbed, straight out of a casting call for the “All-American Couple”—the only thing missing was the dog. Hand in hand, they walked up the steps of a gracious old home, wisteria falling from the balconies and the world swathed in black.

The next shot was of the two leaving the house. Both were flushed, their lips swollen, hair messed up—the man’s shirt was buttoned wrong while the woman was missing her thin floral scarf. “Is this something a wife does for her husband and vice versa?”

“They have their own subculture,” Dmitri told her. “Marry within it. Makes everything go smoother.”

Putting away the photos, she tried to get her head around the idea as Dmitri drove them out of the Bronx into Westchester and toward Connecticut. It was as they were passing from Greenwich into Stamford that she remembered something she’d meant to mention about another strange subculture. “I had an e-mail from Detective Santiago,” she said, realizing she felt no dread in spite of the fact that she’d been held and brutalized a bare hour outside of this city—the area was so different as to be on another planet. “They’ve already arrested someone for the murder yesterday morning.”