Archangel's Blade (Guild Hunter #4)(18)

Stalking in, he said, “Leave that. We’re heading out.”

An arrogant command, but she read the tension in the air, made the connection. “Did you find the rest of the body?” Even as she spoke, she was removing the data card from the laptop in case she couldn’t immediately return to retrieve it.

“Yes.” Dmitri’s phone rang as they entered the elevator, but clearly the signal didn’t drop because he had a quick, curt conversation.

Meanwhile, the other vampire turned to look at her. He said nothing, and those mirrored sunglasses made it impossible for her to get a reading on him. Wanting to distract herself from the fact that she was trapped in a steel cage with two deadly predators, she said, “Sunglasses in the dark as a fashion statement went out with perms.”

He flashed his teeth—but not his fangs—at her. “You don’t want to see what’s behind the shades, sweetheart.” The last word was a mockery of an endearment that made every hair on her body rise in defensive warning.

“Venom.”

The vampire turned to face the front again, but the corners of his lips continued to tug up at the corners. “You want me to drive?”

“No, we’ll take the Ferrari. Take another car so I can leave you there.”

“I might make it faster on foot and it’ll give me a chance to observe the crowd without them being aware of it.”

“Go.”

Stepping out into the artificial light of an underground garage had never felt so good—she was fairly certain that without Dmitri to hold his leash, Venom would’ve shown her his fangs in more ways than one. “Now I know you’re important,” she said when the currently open-topped Ferrari proved to be parked in the spot nearest the elevator.

“If it took you this long, Honor, you’re dimmer than you look.”

As a taunt, it was only mildly irritating, especially when it was clear Dmitri wasn’t paying full attention. Sliding onto the butter-soft leather of the passenger seat, she looked over to where Venom had exited the garage. “What’s with the sunglasses?”

“You haven’t heard? He’s been in the city long enough to have come into contact with a number of hunters.”

“I didn’t work in the country much . . . before.” She took her first real breath in what felt like an hour as Dmitri drove them out of the secure Tower zone and into the music of Manhattan—complete with beeping horns, yelled-out insults, and a thousand cell phone conversations taking place at once. “Had no reason to interact with Tower personnel when I was in the city.”

“In that case”—an amused tone—“I’ll leave it to Venom to surprise you.”

The city picked up in volume the farther they got from the Tower. New York had overwhelmed her when she’d first arrived—fresh off a bus from North Dakota. This wasn’t home—no place was home, really—but at least the Guild was here. Ashwini and Sara lived here. So did Demarco, Ransom, and Vivek. Friends who had searched for her with relentless persistence, who would die for her if it came down to it. That was something. And it gave her an anchor when everything else was spiraling out of control. “Where did they find the body?”

“In Times Square.”

Disbelief was followed by a sudden mental connection. “The same spot where Raphael punished that vampire?” The incident was legend. The archangel had broken every single bone in the vampire’s body, then left him in the center of Times Square for three long hours. Cold, calculated, brutal, it had been a punishment no one would ever forget.

At the time, she’d felt pity. Now she knew exactly how sadistic the almost-immortals could be, their minds capable of thinking of the most depraved, dehumanizing of horrors. Now she understood that Raphael’s punishment might have been nothing but a warning.

“Close enough.” Swerving around a delivery truck, Dmitri ignored the cussing of a cabdriver—who bit off his tirade midword—and stared at a suited business executive about to jaywalk across the road. She froze in place, her coffee dropping unheeded to the asphalt. “Condition of the body parts says he wasn’t dropped from the air,” he said after they flew past the woman, “so the pieces had to be carried in.”

Parts. Pieces.

Not such a surprise, given the decapitated head. “Surveillance?” she asked as they hit the edge of the wonderland of flashing billboards and crushing humanity that was Times Square.

“It’s being pulled.” Parking illegally in the middle of a street that had been blocked off, the crowd pressing at the police cordon, he got out. Everyone within a foot of him moved back . . . and kept moving as he walked through to the scene.

Honor followed in his wake, saw people’s eyes take in the knife strapped to her thigh. The tense expressions disappeared, to be replaced by wary smiles. Hunters were generally well enough liked by the general public, since folks knew that if it all went to shit and the vampires bathed the streets in blood, it would be the Guild that would ride to the rescue. Even the weaker vamps in the crowd gave her friendly nods—law-abiding citizens had nothing to fear from the Guild.

A minute later, she ducked under the police tape to find herself looking at a scene more suited to a slaughterhouse than the chaotic, vivid center of one of the most well-known cities in the world. A thousand scents surrounded her—the sweet, sweet taste of sugar from the chocolatier across the street; coffee, bitter and rich, from the place on the corner; tobacco smoke and car exhaust mixed with the sour tang of human sweat—but none of it could overwhelm the ripe, wet smell of rotting flesh.