Angels' Blood (Guild Hunter #1)(28)

Poison

They were fools, all of them. They thought he was going to die.

He laughed, despite the pain that sliced through his eyes and into his body, agony that threatened to turn his bowels to water, his bones to so much pulp. He laughed until it was the only sound in the universe, the only truth.

Oh, no, he wasn't going to die. He was going to survive this trial they called poison. A lie. An effort to consolidate their own power. Not only was he going to survive, he was going to come out of it a god. And when he was done, the Cadre of Ten would tremble and the earth run dark with rivers of blood.

Rich, nourishing, sensual . . . blood.

Elena walked out the Tower door and kept going, ignoring the taxi standing by. An incandescent anger, richer, deeper, more deadly than anything she'd ever before felt, fired through her nerve endings, causing pain but also keeping her alive, keeping her going.

The bastard, the goddamn bastard!

Tears pricked. She refused to let them rise. To do that would be to admit that she'd expected something more from Raphael, something human.

Catching a familiar scent, she spun on her heel, knife in hand. "Go home, vamp." Her voice was molten fury.

Dmitri gave a courtly bow. "Be that I could do as my lady asks. Unfortunately"-he straightened, his shades reflecting her own angry image back at her-"I have other orders."

"Do you always do as your master commands?"

His lips thinned. "I stay with Raphael out of loyalty."

"Yeah, right. Like a little puppy dog." She dug in her claws, in the mood to draw blood. "Do you sit up and beg when he asks, too?"

Dmitri was suddenly in front of her, having moved so fast he was gripping her knife hand before she could draw breath. "Don't push me, hunter. I'm the head of Raphael's security force. If it were up to me, you'd be strung up in chains, screaming as your flesh was flayed off your bones."

The erotic scent of him made the image even more barbaric. "Didn't Raphael tell you to stop the scent games?" She dropped a knife down from her arm sheath and into the palm of her weaker hand. Weaker, not weak. All hunters could fight with both hands.

"That was last night." He bent closer, the planes of his face exquisitely drawn, the curve of his lips touched with a hint of cruelty. "Today, he's probably extremely pissed with you. He won't mind if I take a discreet bite." A hint of fang as he flashed her on purpose.

"Right here on the street?" she asked, looking up at the line of his throat, vividly conscious of the push of his erection.

He didn't bother to glance around. "We're near Archangel Tower. The streets belong to us."

"But"-she smiled-"I. Fucking. Don't!" Slashing out with her knife, she carved a line across his throat.

Blood sprayed in an arterial rush but she'd already dodged out of the way. Dmitri grabbed at his neck and fell to his knees, his shades falling away to display eyes blazing fire. She read her death in those eyes.

"Don't be a baby," she murmured, wiping the knife on the grass and sliding it back into the sheath. "We both know a vamp your age will recover within the next ten minutes." A violent wave of vampire scent crashed into her senses. "And here come your flunkies to help you out. Nice talking to you, Dmitri darling."

"Bitch." It was a wet gurgle.

"Thanks."

He actually smiled, hard, lethal, scary as hell. "I like bitches." The words were already clearer, his healing progressing at a faster pace than she would've believed.

But it was the dark hunger in his tone that got to her. Damn kinky vampire had actually liked the knife. Shit. Turning her back to him, she ran. The second he healed, he'd come after her. And right now, she was worried less about being killed than about being seduced out of her f*cking mind.

Dmitri might make her ache with need, but she didn't want him when he wasn't around to dose her with that scent of his. It was a compulsion, that scent, far stronger than any other she'd ever heard of. But that was hardly surprising given who he called sire.

Raphael had taken her between one breath and the next. She'd thought she'd learned to detect him, to pick up the odd sense of disconnection between mind and self that had accompanied his earlier attempts. But this time, there had been nothing. One second she was worrying about vampire serial killers, the next she was crawling all over him, trying to suck his tongue down her throat. If she hadn't snapped out of it, she was pretty sure she'd have been sucking other things, too.

Her face flushed.

Not in anger, though that was there. In desire. In heat. She might not want Dmitri when he was out of range, but she wanted the archangel. That made her a candidate for the asylum, but under no circumstances did it excuse what he'd done.

An instant later, she passed out of the restricted Tower zone to hit busy city streets, but instead of slowing down, she pushed herself even harder. Reaching into her pocket as she ran, she pulled out a cell phone and pressed in an emergency code. "I need a retrieval," she gasped as soon as someone answered. "Sending location." She pressed a button, activating the special GPS widget-it would transmit her location to the Guild computers until she switched it off. Because she couldn't stay in one place. The second she did, the game was over.

She kept an eye out for a taxi, but, of course, there were none in sight.