Archangel's Prophecy (Guild Hunter #11)(21)

“Quarter. Got two dead vamps.” Large gold hoops swung in Ash’s ears, multihued jewels dangling from the gold.

Marguerite had often worn long dangles in her ears, their tinkling music the background score to Elena’s childhood. “Fight?” she managed to say through the ache in her heart for a woman who’d never again slip on pretty earrings or wear her favorite white dress with the yellow flowers on it.

“Nah,” Ashwini said. “Not an ordinary fight, anyway—someone really lost their shit.” The other hunter turned the screen of her phone toward Elena. “Swipe through for the full effect.”

Elena whistled as she did so. The two vampires in the crime scene photos had been butchered. That their heads had been hacked off was fairly standard—most vampires could be killed by whacking off the head, and so that was the default when someone went after one of the Made. It was the rest of what had been done to the victims that was unusual.

The two looked to have been stabbed hundreds of times, until their flesh resembled ground meat. Not just that but other parts of their bodies had also been hacked off. A hand in one case and the genitals in the other. Nothing surgical about the amputations, either; it looked as if the perpetrator had done the genitals with a serrated hunting knife. As for the hand, the wrist bones were badly shattered. Broadsword, maybe.

“Slight case of overkill.”

“You’d be surprised.” Ashwini slid the phone into a zippered pocket of her jacket. “Janvier and I see a ton of weird-ass shit working the Quarter. But this one might be more standard—I’m hearing rumors the two vics might’ve been either angling to horn in on another vampire’s cattle, or poking their noses in a vampire gang’s drug turf.”

“Vics post-Contract?”

“Yep.”

Elena shook her head. “You’d think after over a hundred years of existence, people would get to be a bit smarter.” Poaching from another vampire’s harem of permanent blood donors was considered a mortal crime; and as for the drug gangs, their tendency to eviscerate anyone who encroached on their turf wasn’t exactly a state secret.

“Why do you live in hope, Ellie?”

“It’s a flaw.”

Laughter that faded quickly into a frown. “Don’t be afraid of the owls.”

Elena froze in place, her breath shards in her lungs. “No?”

“No, they’re only messengers of a messenger.” A motorcycle purred to a stop in front of the lobby doors, snagging Ashwini’s attention. “That’s my ride. Off we go to look at blood and gore—Janvier takes me on the best dates.”

Skin yet chilled, Elena watched Ashwini stride out to get onto the bike behind her husband. Janvier passed back her motorcycle helmet. A couple of seconds later and the two were gone, racing off toward the sin, sex, and darkness of the Quarter.

Leaving Elena with that unsettling piece of advice about the owls. The last time Ashwini had given Elena something, it had been a blade star, and it had turned out to be the perfect weapon to take down the monstrous angel who’d brutalized Elena’s grandparents. Ignoring Ash when she came out with one of her random statements was an intensely stupid thing to do.

“So,” Elena muttered to herself, “don’t get freaked out by the owls.” That in itself wasn’t an issue; the owls had been lovely and graceful and unthreatening. No, the problem was that Ash’s words implied Elena would be seeing more of the ghost birds with the enormous golden eyes and white feathers.

Fuck.

It was the last thing she wanted to hear when she already felt out of sorts, odd. She’d woken in Raphael’s arms, a lump of sadness sitting on her chest. He’d known. He always knew.

“Did you dream?” A masculine face piercingly familiar yet beautiful enough to stun, looking down at her, strands of hair purer than midnight falling over his forehead.

“I told my mother I wasn’t afraid.” A ragged whisper. “I wasn’t, not even when the entire room filled with blood. I was just so, so sad.”

Enclosing her in his arms, her archangel had shut out the world in which her mother and two eldest sisters no longer existed, and, after a while, she’d permitted herself to cry.

For Marguerite, who would never grow any older than she’d been when she hanged herself.

For talented, mercurial, loving Belle, who’d taught Elena to play baseball and whose legs had been savagely broken.

For smart, kind, bossy Ari, who’d tried to protect Elena with her last breath.

For their small, happy family that had disintegrated into splinters.

Even for her fundamentally damaged father, who’d married a strong, intelligent woman who loved him, and yet who’d once kept a mistress who was a pale facsimile of Marguerite.

Haunted by the memories, the scent of gardenias a sensory echo that clung, Elena had spent the early-morning hours on the snowy lawn above the Hudson, pushing her body through a training routine Galen had designed to teach her to fight with wings. Raphael’s barbarian of a weapons-master could be a pitiless bastard, but he was also brilliant.

She’d taken care not to jolt her hurt wing, but she hadn’t held back otherwise.

Raphael had watched her until it was time for him to leave to join Illium’s elite squadron; they were training over the ocean again today. After all that had happened and the certainty that Lijuan would be a nightmare brimming with power when she rose again, Raphael was taking no chances with his people’s readiness.