Archangel's Storm (Guild Hunter 5)

Venom gave her a faint smile in answer. “It says you have fifteen minutes till your meeting.”

“I thought to arrive early.” Give myself room to settle so that nothing Neha does will goad me into a fatal mistake.

“Indulge me,” Venom said, “and arrive exactly on time.”

Glancing up, she raised a hand and plucked his sunglasses off his face before he realized her intent. The way he moved away from her was a sinuous, beautiful, fast thing, but she held her position. “You had only to ask,” he said, pushing back disordered strands of hair as he rose from his combat-ready crouch, his green eyes vivid and hypnotic against the desert brown of his skin, warm and of this land.

“I thought to read your eyes.” Mahiya handed back his sunglasses, a faint niggling at the back of her mind. “But that was foolish,” she said, the odd sense that she was missing something gone before she could pursue it. “I do not know anyone who might read such eyes.”

Sliding the shades back on, Venom began to walk away from her. “Remember, arrive exactly on time.” Then he picked up his pace and was gone in a quicksilver snap of movement that was nothing human.

Yet no matter how fast he was, he could not make it to Guardian before she did. Even so, she flew up to the palace roof to wait, having decided to give him the time he’d asked for, her sense of “wrongness” amplifying the more she thought about the situation. But not attending the meet wasn’t an option, not when it had most likely been Neha who’d sent the note—the archangel knew Mahiya had a sickening fear of Guardian . . . and she knew why.

Please no! Please!

It was the only time she had ever begged. It was also the only time she’d seen an expression of horror on Neha’s face, as if she could not believe her own actions. It hadn’t stopped her though . . . and Anoushka had been standing beside her all the while, her mother’s cold-eyed shadow.

Only two minutes to go till the meeting.

Spreading out her wings, she swept off the roof and up into the clouds, angling toward the ruined temple. In this, Neha had erred. Though Guardian made Mahiya’s skin sticky with fear sweat, the temple held only happy memories.

Those memories a talisman, she swept over Guardian and its sentries. Some distance from the fort’s protective walls to the south lay the crumbling ruins of a temple that had been built long ago to honor the archangel who had ruled here before Neha. Neha wasn’t responsible for the destruction. It had simply fallen out of use some years after the archangel in question had been killed in a battle against another of the Cadre.

While one entire side had collapsed, the roof having crashed onto the paving stones below, the other half was more or less upright. Ten sturdy columns held up the remainder of the roof, the holes in it scattering sunshine over the floor below to create a mosaic of light and shadow.

Landing outside the temple, Mahiya took a deep breath of the thinner mountain air and folded her wings . . . just as a step sounded behind her. She twisted on her feet to find herself face-to-face with a Venom whose skin gleamed with sweat, his formerly pristine white shirt now damp and molding itself to sleek muscle, his unshielded eyes narrowed against the sunlight.

Astonished, she stared. “No one’s that fast.”

A flash of fang as he grinned. “I beg to disagree.”

Brain kicking into gear, she looked beyond him to the flat walls of the fort, snapped her head back. “You know the tunnels.” From what little information she’d been able to scrape up, the subterranean passages that connected the two forts had been built up over millennia, had to be a maze.

“Maybe.” Brushing past her with a speed that was in no way human, he ran up the temple steps.

“Venom!” She stepped into the dappled light of the temple on his heels . . . and was overwhelmed by a sense of peace. This had been her favorite playground when she’d been a child angel on visits home from the Refuge. She’d had a thousand adventures within its broken, tumbled-down walls, written her name with a charcoal stick on one of the columns before guilt made her return to rub it out.

The memory had her lips kicking up at the corners even as she searched for any sign of Neha and found none. However, Venom stood not far in front of her, checking a shadowed alcove. “You have to step out before you make yourself a target.” Neha would not tolerate the fact that Mahiya was being escorted by a vampire who remained something of a favorite, regardless of his choice to serve Raphael. “You can easily keep watch from a concealed position.” His help would be welcome should her sense of wrongness not be her imagination running riot.

“Hmm? No, I don’t think so.”

“I’ll drag you out if I have to.” He was Jason’s friend, and Jason, she knew instinctively, was a man with few friends. Venom couldn’t be allowed to throw his life away.

Venom’s response was low voiced. “Come look at this, Mahiya.”

25

Caught by the odd tone of his voice, she crossed through a beam of sunlight and came to a dead halt. Within the alcove in front of Venom sat a box wrapped in sparkling gold paper tied with a silver bow. When the vampire gingerly slid out the card tucked in under the silver ribbon, it proved to contain nothing but her name in the same script as that on the note commanding her to be here at this time.

“I may not be a spymaster like our Jason,” Venom mused, “but I would hazard Neha did not send that note.”

Mahiya had to agree, her mind trying to make sense of the bizarre circumstances and failing. “Let’s take the box outside before we open it.”

“You shouldn’t open it at all until Jason and I have a chance to—”

“As a strong vampire, your hearing is acute,” she interrupted. “Do you hear ticking? Anything to indicate it may contain an incendiary device?” If an explosion hit either of them right, it could decapitate and kill.

Venom angled his head, finally gave a reluctant shake. “No. But—”

“And, there is a high chance you have an excellent sense of smell.” She’d seen him “taste” the air with his tongue. “Smell anything suspicious?” The fact was, she knew if she walked away now, either Venom or Jason would take the risk. And that, she refused to allow. “Chemicals, anything?”

Gritted teeth. “No.”

“I don’t, either, and if this is the murderer,” she said reasonably, “he or she has no reason to play such games.” An angel strong enough to annihilate Arav could break her in half. “Someone else could have stumbled upon this—a guard on a break, a curious child—and none of the murders so far appear to have been random.” The latter was arguable, but her gut said there was a connection between the four victims, and she knew Jason agreed.