Angels' Flight(6)

“But you provided the most intelligent conversation in the room.” Settling his wings close to his back, the angel walked to a gleaming mahogany table in one corner. “You aid the Guild Hunter?”

Ashwini let Janvier speak, using the time to study Nazarach, his power snapping a whip against her senses…?a whip laced with broken glass.

“The idea of a kiss arouses my curiosity.” Janvier paused. “If I may—this situation between Antoine and Callan seems beneath your interest.”

“Antoine,” Nazarach said, his face turning expressionless in the way of the truly old ones, “has begun to overreach himself. He has come dangerously close to challenging my authority.”

“He’s changed, then.” Janvier shook his head. “The Antoine I knew was ambitious, but he also had a healthy regard for his own life.”

“It is the woman—Simone.” The angel passed a photograph to Ashwini, eyes of inhuman amber lingering on her own face a fraction too long. “Barely into her third century and yet she twists Antoine around her finger.”

“Why isn’t she dead?” Ashwini asked point-blank. Angels were a law unto themselves. There was no court on earth that would hold Nazarach to account if he decided to eliminate one of the Made.

Vampires chose their masters when they chose immortality.

The angel flared out his wings slightly, then snapped them shut. “It seems Antoine loves her.”

Ashwini nodded. “You kill her, he’ll turn against you.” And he’d die. Angels were not known for their benevolence.

“After being alive for seven hundred years,” Nazarach mused, speaking of centuries as if they were mere decades, “I find I’m loath to lose one of the few men—his recent mistakes aside—I actually respect.”

Returning the photo of the sultry brunette who was apparently making a very old vampire dance to her tune, Ashwini forced herself to meet Nazarach’s gaze—the amber acted as a lens, focusing the screams to piercing clarity. “How does this tie in with the kidnapping?” she asked, blocking the nightmare with everything she had.

“Callan Fox,” Nazarach said, “intrigues me. I don’t want him dead yet. And Antoine will kill the young pup to retrieve his granddaughter. Get Monique out and bring her to me.”

“You’re asking us to hand you a hostage to use against Antoine.” Ashwini shook her head, relief a cool brush down her spine. “The Guild doesn’t get involved in political disputes.”

“Between angels,” Nazarach corrected. “This is a…?problem between an angel and the vampires under his control.”

“Even so,” she said, unable to stop her eyes from going to those wings of amber and light, unable to understand how such beauty could exist alongside the inhuman darkness that stained Nazarach from within, “if you want Monique, all you have to do is ask. Callan will hand her over.” The leader of the Fox kiss might be willing to take on Antoine Beaumont, but only a very stupid vampire would stand against an angel. And Callan Fox was not stupid. “You don’t need me.”

Nazarach gave her an inscrutable smile. “You will not mention my name to Callan. As for the rest—the Guild has already agreed to the terms.”

“No offense,” she said, wondering if he’d look as brutally beautiful while he choked the life out of those who displeased him, “but I need to check that with my boss.”

“Go ahead, Guild Hunter.” Smooth permission, no mercy in those eyes full of death.

Stepping back until she was almost in the hallway, she put through the call on her cell phone, aware of Janvier and Nazarach talking in low voices about things long past, shadows of which experiences clung to Nazarach, but not to Janvier.

Angel and vampire. Both touched by immortality, both compelling, but in vastly different ways. Nazarach was a being honed out of time, perfect, lethal, and utterly, absolutely inhuman. Janvier, in contrast, was earth and blood, deadly and a little rough…?and still somehow of this world.

“Ashwini?” Sara’s familiar tone. “What’s the problem?”

She laid out Nazarach’s orders. “Has it been cleared?”

“Yes.” The Guild Director sighed. “I wish to hell we didn’t have to get involved in what promises to turn into a giant clusterf*ck, but there’s no way out.”

“He’s playing games.”

“He’s an angel,” Sara said, and it was an answer. “And technically Monique is in breach of her Contract, so Nazarach has the power to send out anyone and anything to retrieve her—even if he could achieve the same aim with a single phone call.”

“Damn.” Ashwini liked working on the edges, but when angels got involved, those edges tended to cut bone deep, drawing the dark red of lifeblood. “You got my back?”

“Always.” An unflinching response. “I’ve put Kenji and Baden on standby—give the signal and we’ll have you out of there in under an hour.”

“Thanks, Sara.”

“Hey, I don’t want to lose my main source of live entertainment.” A smile she could almost hear. “No new hunt order has come in for the Cajun. Just thought you’d want to know.”

“Uh-huh.” Ashwini hung up with a quick good-bye, wondering what Sara would say if she knew exactly who Ashwini was consorting with at the moment.