Angels' Blood (Guild Hunter #1)(84)

"Now, Elieanora." He hung up.

"I need to get to my father's brownstone."

Turning from the laptop, Raphael raised an eyebrow. "I thought you'd said what you needed to say to your father yesterday?"

She didn't bother to ask how he knew-it wasn't as if she and Jeffrey had made any attempt to keep the volume down. "Something's wrong. Is the car still out front?"

He paused and she realized he was probably talking to the vampires mind-to-mind. "Dmitri will drive you."

"Fine." She began to stride out. "If this is one of Jeffrey's power games-Damn it, no, I'm not going to drop everything just because he tells me to." She pulled out the phone and called him back."I'm on a hunt," she said as soon as he picked up. "I don't have time to come play happy families."

"Then perhaps you'll find the time to come clean up the mess your friend left behind."

Her heart chilled. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm fairly sure she was still alive when he split her open and skinned off the flesh to display her broken rib cage."

Raphael flew her to her father's, landing on the street with a smooth grace that would've stunned onlookers, had anybody been watching. But it was too early for anyone but the birds, especially in this exclusive area.

The scent hit her the second they landed. The by-now familiar bite of acid tinged with the thick richness of fresh blood. "Uram," she said to Raphael as they started up the steps. "He knows I'm tracking him."

Raphael scanned the street. "Either he stripped the mind of someone who knew about your involvement, or he saw you on the hunt."

"Glamour." Lips pursed tight, she pushed through the door her father had told her he'd leave open. "Jeffrey's in the study. He said the body's in the upstairs apartment." An apartment she'd always assumed was used as an extension of her father's office.

They went straight up. It was as she was about to push open the door that she remembered Geraldine. Pale skin, perfect suit, vampire scent laced into her perfume. "Hell." She walked through.

There was no one in the living room. Crossing the carpet only after making certain she wouldn't be trampling evidence that could lead to Uram, she followed the scent to the doorway of what proved to be a bedroom. The woman lay exactly as Jeffrey had described. It was as if someone had started to perform an autopsy and been interrupted midway. Her chest was cracked open to display her insides, flaps of skin hanging off her rib cage.

But that wasn't what held Elena frozen on the doorstep.

It wasn't Geraldine. This woman had skin dusted with the gold of a tropical clime and hair a pale, pale blonde. Fine bones, a length that would equal height on the short side of average, lips that had smiled easily in life. Her fists clenched. "It was definitely Uram." A truth forced out through gritted teeth. "I'll follow the scent."

She was about to push past Raphael when he caught her arm. "Don't take foolish chances because you're angry at your father."

"I'm not angry." Her emotions were a chaotic stew she couldn't understand. "She looks like my mother," she blurted out. A faded copy, a pale imitation. But nothing like the wintery elegance of Jeffrey's new wife, Gwendolyn.

"She was his mistress."

"You knew?" Of course he'd known-the Cadre of Ten wouldn't trust anyone it hadn't investigated inside out. "Never mind. My father isn't the issue-Uram's starting to hunt me and mine. He's baiting us."

Releasing her, Raphael walked into the room. "Your father said she was warm to the touch when he arrived?"

She nodded in a jerky motion, feeling as if everything in her body was out of sync. "He checked for a pulse." God alone knew why. "Means Uram hasn't been up and around long. Probably a couple of hours at most."

"I don't believe he took blood from her. There are no marks but the ones that caused her death."

"He's probably still glutted." She couldn't believe she sounded so normal when she was on the verge of screaming. Jeffrey had forbidden her and Beth from even talking about Marguerite after her death, yet he'd kept this woman, this shadow of her mother, with him. But Jeffrey's hypocrisy wasn't the fault of this poor, brutalized stranger-she deserved to have her killer brought to whatever justice the Cadre meted out to its own.

"Glutted," she repeated, forcefully corralling her skittering thoughts, "but not stupid." Uram was beginning to act more like a thinking being. "Most vamps caught in bloodlust don't reach that stage until at least three or four months after the bloodlust first sets in. The only one who's known to have survived that long after turning was-" The name stuck in her throat, a vicious, cutting evil.

"Slater Patalis," Raphael completed for her. "Venom's arrived to complete the cleanup. I'll fly above. I've asked Dmitri to stay out of range."

"Good." She turned away, unable to look at the woman on the bed. "What about my father?"

"He knows only that his lover was killed by a rogue vampire. That's a rumor it's to our advantage to spread."

Venom's scent curled up the stairs as they headed down. "The woman has family," the vampire said. "No one in the city, however."