Archangel's Shadows (Guild Hunter 7)

The first room on the left was some kind of rumpus room with a television and surprisingly laid-back furniture. Either Giorgio hadn’t gotten around to updating it or it was for the women. The other room was a toilet covered in fancy tile. So, likely, the remaining room hadn’t yet been updated. Dead certain someone was in the room she’d left for last, she made her way to the door.

At the same time, she swapped out her guns for knives. They’d make far less noise and not alert anyone else in the house. Then she drop-rolled into the room—to a rushing attack from a supernaturally pretty vampire with waves of golden hair. But Giorgio wasn’t used to fighting for his life. He went for where her body should’ve been, rather than where she actually was.

She’d come up into a crouch and thrust a knife into his gut before he could stop his headlong rush. His blood stained his white shirt scarlet. Well aware how quickly vamps his age could shrug off a gut wound, she thrust a second knife directly into his heart seconds after the first, then rose to stab a third into his neck from the side.

It severed his jugular, blood pumping out in hot spurts to splatter the warm yellow walls of what turned out to be the kitchen, but he still kept coming, trying to gurgle something that sounded like “whore.”

“Better a whore than a sadistic piece of shit like you,” she said and, grabbing the hunting knife from her belt, slammed it into his brain through his left ear, then twisted.

A shocked look on his face, Giorgio collapsed at last.

Ashwini knew he wasn’t dead—she’d made certain of it. She wanted Giorgio to suffer immortal justice. It could last years. The blade in his brain should keep him down for a day at least, but she wasn’t going to risk it, with all the weirdness in this case. For all she fucking knew, Giorgio was part reborn and would shamble back to life as soon as she turned her back.

Raiding the kitchen in lieu of using up her own knives, she methodically put carbon-steel steak knives through his palms, forearms, and shoulders, careful not to make skin-to-skin contact. After which she brought a meat cleaver down on his thigh, snapping the bone. She did the same to his other femur.

Unlike Giorgio, she took no pleasure in causing the injuries. Her only motive was to keep him in place. Except for the last two knives she’d found—narrow and sharp filleting blades.

“This is for every woman you’ve ever hurt,” she said and pinned the bastard’s testicles to the floor, the knives slicing easily through his pants. “I hope that fucking hurts when you wake up.”

Judging him contained, she got up and headed out into the hallway again.

The sirens she could already hear told her backup would arrive long before Giorgio had any chance of rising. Taking the stairs to the second floor, she went up on silent feet . . . to see Janvier coming down from the third floor. She jerked up her head. He said, “One girl safe,” in a low tone, then zeroed in on the blood on her jacket.

“Giorgio’s.”

Touching his fingers to her jaw, he looked down the corridor. “Cornelius must be on this floor if he’s here.”

“He is.” The nauseating ugliness she’d sensed even from the outside dominated the air here, acrid and old. Fighting the sick feeling in her gut, she slipped her guns back out. Knives wouldn’t do much good against an angel, but a brain full of lead might slow him down enough for Janvier to behead him.

They went down the corridor side by side, clearing two rooms before Ashwini’s churning stomach told her they were at the right one. Communicating that to Janvier with a single glance, she didn’t argue when he nodded at her to open the door so he could go in first. As a vampire, he had more chance of surviving a pissed-off angel than she did. And she had a better chance of keeping him safe if she went in with guns blazing behind him.

Turning the knob, she shoved it open before swinging around to go in behind Janvier. He went in as low and as quiet as she had in the kitchen and came up ready to defend against an attack . . . except there was no attack.

There was, however, an angel in the room.

Ashwini kept her guns up, her eyes refusing to believe what they saw in front of them. When she chanced a quick look at Janvier, it was to see the same disbelief in his eyes.

Janvier had shown her a photo of Cornelius soon after they’d first found his feathers. The male in the image had had a heavy build, his hair a glossy chestnut so dark it was near black, his eyes a deep greenish hazel, and his skin a sun-stroked brown that—when paired with his sculptured features—spoke of the Mediterranean or northern Africa. His wings had been spread in the image, warrior strong and ready for flight.

In front of the windows stood . . . she didn’t know what to call him. He might’ve once been an angel but his wings were now two lumps of petrified cartilage and bone, the cream of his feathers visible only in sporadic patches, the red all but gone. When he turned to face them, she saw his cheeks were sunken in, his skin stark white, and that his dusty-brown hair evidenced the same molting as his wings, the skin on the exposed parts of his skull reminiscent of tanned hide.

Ashwini could’ve circled his upper arm with her forefinger and thumb. It was as if he’d lost all body fat and muscle mass. But even his bones weren’t quite right, his jaw sticking out in an odd way and his right leg appearing to have a second knee that pushed at the thin red silk pants that hung over his emaciated form, his upper half bare to reveal a rib cage that was crushed on one side.

His eyes were a filmy blue, his teeth jagged . . . and covered with blood, the same blood that ringed his mouth and dripped down his chest.

Smiling grotesquely at them, he slid to his knees and went as if to feed again from the woman on the floor, her hair a pool of magenta and her skin a pale brown. Ashwini shot him through the head, hoping it wouldn’t blow his skull to smithereens. With a normal angel, that wouldn’t be a risk, but with this one . . .

Cornelius fell forward but his head was whole. Good. He, too, needed to face immortal justice.

Janvier pulled the enemy angel’s body off the woman, while Ashwini checked her for a pulse. She had to use the wrist—the woman’s throat was too bloody a mess.

“Come on,” she whispered, seeing only the most minor signs of long-term damage on the victim—her skin was a touch drier than it should be, the sheen of her dyed hair dulled but not absent. It gave Ashwini hope that they weren’t too late. “Come on.”

Then there it was: a pulse, thready but present.

Hearing boots slamming up the stairs, she ran to the door, saw Trace. “Get the paramedics!”