Archangel's Heart (Guild Hunter 9)

Exactly one hundred steps later, she heard the echo of a scream, but it wasn’t one of terror. Frowning, she walked faster, driven by the pounding urgency deep in her gut.

Guild Hunter.

Raphael’s tone had her freezing. I’m not in control. She wasn’t used to this feeling, wasn’t used to hunting without a plan.

I will be your control.

Had anyone, even Raphael, made that offer a year ago, Elena might’ve bristled.

Today, safe in the knowledge he wouldn’t allow her to mess this up, she moved on. And when she felt the waves of his mind crashing into hers, she knew to pull back, to slow. The screams got louder the deeper they went, the emotion in those screams easy to identify now.

Someone’s having one hell of a tantrum, she said as they came to a narrow door with a padlock that was hanging open on the latch on one side.

Raphael touched her on her shoulder. When she glanced back, he made a motion. She nodded. She’d go in low, and he’d come up behind her.

“. . . going to be mine, too!” It was a male voice yelling, so much twisted emotion in it that it hurt Elena’s ears. “Did you hear me? I’m going to own your child as I own you!”

Movement, boots slapping on the floor, then, “Scream! Scream!”

The speaker switched languages on his next words.

You understand that one, Archangel?

It’s a mishmash of various languages. Not much sense. He’s continuing to demand that someone scream.

Elena smiled grimly. Which means whoever he has down here, that person is refusing to give him what he wants even though he’s threatening to take their child. Knife held ready in her hand, she unlatched the unlocked door and said, One, two . . . three!

Pulling open the door, she rolled in and took in the situation at a single glance. The shock of what she saw might’ve paralyzed her if she hadn’t been so angry and so well trained. Coming up in a fluid strike, she swapped the knife for the blade star at the same time. This brick-lined cell was much bigger than she’d imagined and Gian was way on the other side. Given his age and strength and training, he might be able to move fast enough to avoid a knife thrown at him.

The blade star was whirling from her hand even as those thoughts passed through her head, the calculations done on a subconscious level. It whipped through the air at lightning speed as Gian went to thrust his knife through the eye of a battered and emaciated male chained to the wall, one of his eyes already pulp, blood dripping down his cheek. His hair might’ve been blond once; it was now dry straw.

The knife fell with a clatter a heartbeat after the blade star embedded itself in Gian’s throat, blood spurting out to spray the face of the blond male . . . who lunged forward as Gian crumpled toward him, and sank his fangs into Gian’s throat. The blond’s throat moved in deep gulps as he drank, while Gian struggled ineffectually.

The sudden blood loss shouldn’t have weakened him that much, so the blade star must’ve done damage to his trachea, too. Angels didn’t need to breathe to live, but not breathing had an impact on their strength.

Especially if a vampire was feeding right from the artery at the same time.

Elena wasn’t about to stop that feeding. The vampire looked like he was starving and had been starving—starved—for a long time. She left Raphael to monitor the situation and to make sure Gian wouldn’t escape; she hadn’t forgotten what Raphael had told her about exactly how dangerous the leader of the Luminata had once been—but on the flip side, Gian had been ruling this little fiefdom for centuries.

Elena had a feeling his flunkies didn’t ever dare challenge him. A ruler as egotistical as Gian wouldn’t stand for it. And Gian had cleared the area of all other possible threats. Unlike the angel she’d seen in the hallway, he hadn’t let his body go to seed, but he had allowed the razored edge of his self to dull, his instincts no longer as sharp.

“Don’t.”

The single chilly word had her swiveling back in readiness to fight—to see Gian’s hand glowing with a green-gold power. Of course he’d have the ability to utilize energy like Aodhan and Illium, she realized. He’d been an archangel’s second once. But he wasn’t the biggest predator in the room. And when Gian ignored Raphael’s order, began to raise his hand up to the vampire’s throat, Raphael seared off half of Gian’s left wing using his own violent energy, the wound cauterized as it was made.

The angel convulsed, his hand falling to his side as the green-gold energy fizzled.

Gian, however, wasn’t the only threat. If the vampire was insane after his trauma, there wasn’t much anyone could do. He’d have to be executed, no matter how unfair that was.

Maddened vampires rarely came back from their murderous urges.

Those thoughts tumbled rapid fire through her brain as she turned to the other captive in the room, her mind trying to catch up with what her eyes were seeing: a woman with hair of moonlight who stared at Elena as if she’d seen a ghost.

Majda had Ari’s eyes, Beth’s eyes, she found herself thinking. Stunning turquoise, so clear and so painfully familiar.

“Marguerite.” The raw whisper was shaped by full lips set in a face that was wrinkled and haggard, those stunning eyes smudged with tears, but it was undoubtedly of the woman in the miniature.

Elena’s breath caught.

“Elena,” she corrected gently as she broke through her shock to examine the chains that held Majda’s wrists and ankles pinned to the wall. “Marguerite was my mother. My maman.” She didn’t know if Majda spoke English, but the word “maman” should be understandable to a woman who’d lived in France.