Archangel's Blade (Guild Hunter 4)

Holes in the walls, bloody palm prints, broken furniture, and paintings skewed crooked where they hadn’t been pulled off and thrown to the ground. “If Amos was sedated,” she said, “how did he do all this, manage to beat Jiana?”

Jason, his presence so silent that she was almost startled to hear the rustle of his wings, spoke for the first time. “A slow-acting or mild sedative would have left him with some awareness of what was happening—enough that he tried to fight it.”

“Jiana would have known,” she murmured, “how to calculate any dose to her son’s size and strength. Then all she’d have had to do was taunt him into a rage.” She could see the weaving, staggering pattern clearly now. He’d crashed into the wall there, skewed the ornamental mirror, tipped over the wooden table with its delicate legs, then kicked his way free and done something that sprayed blood over the wall.

“A blow to Jiana’s mouth,” she said, nodding at the spray.

“We’ll know for certain soon enough,” he said, his wings a whisper of darkness as he walked into a room off the main hall. “Raphael will take the memory from her mind.”

Honor shivered at the idea of such a violation. “How do you stand it?” she asked, aware it was an intimate question, but compelled to ask. “Knowing he could do the same to you?”

“Trust.” He gave her an unreadable look over his shoulder, his eyes as dark as his wings. “The kind of trust that allows you to take Dmitri to your bed even knowing what he’s capable of doing to women who edge his temper.”

Startled by the response, and by the fact that he’d picked up that piece of information though it appeared he’d just returned to the city, she looked with more care at that face marked by the swirling lines of a tattoo that should’ve made him stand out no matter his surroundings. And yet . . . Shadows, she thought, clung to Jason.

“Whatever it is you are to Dmitri, Honor,” he said in that voice as deep and quiet as the heart of night, “it’s not like Carmen or the others.” Lush black lashes came down over near-black eyes, then rose again.

Fascinated by this angel who she knew instinctively rarely spoke to those he didn’t know, she touched her hand to a shattered figurine and waited, knowing he had more to say.

“He won’t brush you off like an annoyance or let you walk away.” Spreading his wings to block the rest of the room from her view, he held her gaze. “It’s too late. Do you understand that?”

32

With her gaze Honor traced the lines of the incredible tattoo that covered the left side of his face, the ink ebony against warm brown skin. Hair pulled off his face into a neat queue, he was both sexy and remote. “Are you trying to warn me or protect him?”

“It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”

“I don’t need to be warned off Dmitri, Jason,” she said, wondering if this dark angel lowered his guard with anyone. “I see him as he is. As for the other . . . it’s not necessary.” The truth was, Dmitri owned her heart.

Jason’s eyes seemed, like his wings, to reflect nothing though he looked straight at her. “Many would’ve curled up and died after what you experienced.”

An intimate observation, but then, he’d answered her question. “I almost did,” she said, wondering why her answer would matter to an angel, yet she knew in her gut it did to Jason. “But turns out, spite is a damn good motivator—I didn’t want the bastards to win.”

Jason’s expression didn’t move off her, and she had the powerful sense he wanted to pursue the topic, but his next words were pragmatic. “Things are as expected in this home.”

“Yes—no, wait.” Turning, she went back to a painting she’d righted on the way in. It was the nude of Jiana in bed, her slumberous eyes looking at the artist as a woman looks at a lover. “This was what I saw,” she whispered, tracing the A in the bottom right-hand corner, nausea churning inside her at the implications. “Amos painted this.”

“Perhaps.”

Nodding, she glanced up. “You’re right. It’s not conclusive. Let’s keep looking.”

The black-winged angel was a silent presence by her side as she explored hallways covered by a rich, cream-colored carpet, thick and lush where it wasn’t crushed by broken and overturned furniture or matted with blood. The farther they got into the house, the less aggressive the carnage, until at last they were at the very end of the second floor, where nothing had been disturbed.

It was there they discovered evidence Honor would’ve been happier never to find. The fine sheets on the large bed were tumbled, a bottle of sensual massage oil on the bedside table. On the floor lay not only a robe of bronze satin and lace that Honor recognized immediately, but a man’s jacket and gleaming leather shoes. “Amos wasn’t wearing shoes.” His bloody footprints had made that clear.

One of Jason’s wings brushed her back as he spread them behind her, a warm, startling weight. “Some things should simply not be.”

“Yes.” Amos, she thought, had never had a chance. Then again, so many in the world had overcome the terrible crimes done against them without needing to torture others. Still, she couldn’t help but imagine the man who was her nightmare as a scared, defenseless child. “Do you have any idea of when this may have begun?”

“Amos and Jiana were always close, to a degree that was noticed.” A pause. “We did a quiet investigation, found nothing amiss.”

“They were clever.” Honor thought of Jiana’s tears, how very convincing she’d been in her despair. “She was clever.” Turning away from the silent accusation of the tumbled sheets, she said, “If this had come to light, would it have led to a severe punishment?” If so, it might well prove to be the strongest motive for Jiana’s attempted murder of her son.

“Yes—an endless one. Even amongst the most dissolute immortals,” Jason added, a dark heat to his tone she realized was rage, “some things are deeply taboo. To subject a child to such depravity, it’s beyond our comprehension.”

“So sweet and soft.” A tone chilling in its gentleness. “I have heard such blood is a delicacy.”

Hot breath on her face. “No! Please!” she screamed, her body pinned, helpless.

Laughter. Followed by a thick, wet sound and then her baby’s screams rending the air.