Angels' Blood (Guild Hunter #1)(11)

"Too many zeros." She took a deep breath. Counted again. "Still too many."

So many that it made Mr. Ebose's substantial payment look like chump change.

Hands sweat-damp, she swallowed and scrolled down. The payment had come from "Archangel Tower: Manhattan." She'd known that. Obviously, she'd known that. But seeing it in black and white was a jolt to the system. The deal was done. She was now officially working for Raphael. And only Raphael.

Her Guild status had been changed from "Active" to "Contracted: Indefinite Period."

Closing the laptop, she stared out at the Tower. She couldn't believe she'd stood on top of that cloud-piercing building only that morning, couldn't believe she'd dared disagree with an archangel, but most of all, she couldn't believe what Raphael wanted her to do. Thousands of tiny little creatures skittered about in her stomach, inciting nausea, panic . . . and a strange, vibrant excitement. This was the kind of job that made legends out of hunters. Of course, to be a legend, you generally had to be dead.

The phone rang, blessedly ending that particular line of thought. "What?"

"Good day to you, too, sunshine," came Sara's cheerful voice.

Elena wasn't fooled. Her friend hadn't made it to the position of Guild Director by being Ms. Congeniality. Nerves of steel and a will like a bull terrier more like it. "I can't tell you anything," she said bluntly. "Don't even ask."

"Come on, Ellie. You know I can keep a secret."

"No. If I tell you, you die." Raphael had made that very clear before he'd let her leave Central Park.

Tell anyone-man, woman, or child-and we'll eliminate them. No exceptions.

Sara snorted. "Don't be melodramatic. I'm-"

"He knew you'd ask," she said, remembering what else the Archangel of New York had said to her in that deceptively easy tone. A naked blade sheathed in velvet, that was Raphael's voice.

"Oh?"

"If I tell you, he won't only take you and Deacon out, he'll do the same to Zoe."

The fury that crackled through the line was pure maternal protectiveness. "Bastard."

"Totally agree."

Sara seemed to be fuming too hard to speak for several long seconds. "The fact that he made that threat means this is big."

"You saw the deposit?"

"Hell, did I see the deposit! I thought the accountant had screwed up and deposited the whole thing into our account instead of just the Guild percentage." She blew out a breath. "Baby girl, that's some kind of cash."

"I don't want it." She was choking on the need to share the sheer incomprehensibility of the task with Sara, with that idiot Ransom, but she couldn't. "He's already cut me off from my best friends." Her hand fisted.

"Let him try," Sara said. "So you can't tell me the details. Big deal. I'll figure it out soon enough. I have some idea."

Excitement danced up Elena's spine. "You do?"

"Killer vampire?" She paused. "Okay, you can't answer but seriously, what else could it be?"

Elena slumped again.

"Remember that one that went rogue?"

"There's been more than one," she said lightly, even as her blood ran cold.

"About twenty years ago. We studied him in our Guild classes."

Not twenty, Elena thought, eighteen. "Slater Patalis." The name fell from her lips like a piece of nightmare, one she'd never shared with anyone, not even the best friend she trusted with everything else. "How many did he end up killing?" she asked-forced herself to ask-before Sara's antennae could start to twang.

"Official body count was fifty-two in the space of a month," came the grim response. "Unofficially, we think there were more." Something creaked and Elena could almost see Sara leaning back in that big leather executive chair she adored like a second child. "Now that I'm director, I have access to all sorts of supersecret stuff."

"Want to share?" She held on to the here and now, ignoring the screaming echoes of a past nothing could change.

"Hmmm, why not-you are my second in command in all but name."

"Ech." Elena stuck out her tongue. "No desk job for me, thank you."

Sara laughed softly. "You'll learn. Anyway, the official line on Slater was that he'd had a psych illness before he was Made, an illness he somehow managed to hide."

"Some kind of severe antisocial personality disorder." Until Sara's comment, Elena had thought she knew every disturbing detail of the life and crimes of the most infamous killer vampire in recent history. "Evidence of childhood abuse and mistreatment of animals. Classic serial killer profile."

"Too classic," Sara pointed out. "It's a load of crock. The Guild made it up after pressure from the Cadre of Ten."

For a second, Elena had the horrifying suspicion that Slater Patalis wasn't really dead, that the Cadre had saved him for some perverse reason of their own. But an instant later, sanity reasserted itself-not only had she seen the autopsy video, she'd snuck into the storage room and picked up the vial of Slater's preserved blood. Her senses had reacted.

Vampire, the blood had whispered, vampire. And when she'd uncorked the bottle, it had murmured to her in Slater's distinctive, hypnotic voice.