Archangel's Blade (Guild Hunter #4)(91)

It was there they discovered evidence Honor would’ve been happier never to find. The fine sheets on the large bed were tumbled, a bottle of sensual massage oil on the bedside table. On the floor lay not only a robe of bronze satin and lace that Honor recognized immediately, but a man’s jacket and gleaming leather shoes. “Amos wasn’t wearing shoes.” His bloody footprints had made that clear.

One of Jason’s wings brushed her back as he spread them behind her, a warm, startling weight. “Some things should simply not be.”

“Yes.” Amos, she thought, had never had a chance. Then again, so many in the world had overcome the terrible crimes done against them without needing to torture others. Still, she couldn’t help but imagine the man who was her nightmare as a scared, defenseless child. “Do you have any idea of when this may have begun?”

“Amos and Jiana were always close, to a degree that was noticed.” A pause. “We did a quiet investigation, found nothing amiss.”

“They were clever.” Honor thought of Jiana’s tears, how very convincing she’d been in her despair. “She was clever.” Turning away from the silent accusation of the tumbled sheets, she said, “If this had come to light, would it have led to a severe punishment?” If so, it might well prove to be the strongest motive for Jiana’s attempted murder of her son.

“Yes—an endless one. Even amongst the most dissolute immortals,” Jason added, a dark heat to his tone she realized was rage, “some things are deeply taboo. To subject a child to such depravity, it’s beyond our comprehension.”

“So sweet and soft.” A tone chilling in its gentleness. “I have heard such blood is a delicacy.”

Hot breath on her face. “No! Please!” she screamed, her body pinned, helpless.

Laughter. Followed by a thick, wet sound and then her baby’s screams rending the air.

Honor jerked back to the present with a cry of horror locked in her throat. Pushing past Jason’s wing, the feel of his feathers liquid silk, she ran through the corridors until she stumbled out into unexpected sunshine, the rain having passed with whispering swiftness. The golden early morning light poured over her, a luminous counterpoint to the terrible sorrow within.

That ugly thought inside the house, that slice of words and sound, hadn’t felt like a dream but a memory. Her memory, though she’d never been in such a horrific situation. Her heart ached with such pain she couldn’t bear it, the infant girl’s frightened screams tearing her soul to pieces.

“Honor.”

It took conscious effort to close off the ripping chasm of a memory that reverberated inside her mind and turn to speak to Jason. “There’s nothing to find here.” Instead of the joy she’d expected to feel at this instant, when the hunt for her abusers was reaching its final stage, there was a hollowness inside her, a sense of loss that erased such petty things as vengeance. “I’m heading to the Guild.”

Jason flared out his wings, the midnight shade so absolute, it absorbed the sunlight. “There is a car waiting for you by the gate.”

“Dmitri,” she murmured, knowing he had to have arranged it.

Jason gave her a penetrating look. “He’s a vampire of old. It is instinct for him to treat his woman with such care.” He was gone in a wash of wind moments later, flying hard and fast up above the cloud layer, until she could no longer see even a glimmer of black.

But he’d left her with a crucial piece of knowledge when it came to dealing with Dmitri in a relationship.

His woman.

She had no doubt that that had been a deliberate word choice on Jason’s part, another hint as to how Dmitri’s brain worked. As she walked to the gate, she considered the issue with care—because Dmitri was the most important part of her life and she wasn’t about to lie to herself about that.

She could reject the car he’d organized and call up a cab, making it clear that she wasn’t about to allow him to treat her like a butterfly in a jar. Or she could accept the ride and the fact that her lover was a thousand-year-old vampire, give or take a few years, who came from a time in which his act would’ve raised no eyebrows.

To be utterly honest, it was nice to feel wanted, to feel cared for after a lifetime spent taking care of herself. While she couldn’t define the relationship between her and Dmitri, she knew he would protect her with brutal ferocity until it was over.

Reaching the car, she slid in. Not only was having a chauffeur in New York nothing to sniff at, but acquiescing to it didn’t do her any harm, while it allowed Dmitri to do what he needed to do: take care of her.

A smile bloomed over her face, a silly kind of happiness infusing her blood. She didn’t fight it, even as she thought that her capitulation when it came to the car would give her an excellent negotiation tool when a bigger battle loomed.

Strategy, that was the key to dealing with a man as intelligent and as harshly practical as Dmitri.

My Dmitri.





Dmitri glanced at Raphael as they stood along the cliff behind Raphael’s home, above the relatively calm waters of the Hudson and across from a Manhattan that had become a shining mirage in the morning sunlight. “Was I wrong?” he asked, knowing Raphael had already spoken to Jiana.

He wanted to be wrong, the need coming from the part of him that believed a mother should always care for her child, the part that knew Ingrede had spent her last breaths trying to save Misha and Caterina.