Archangel's Consort (Guild Hunter #3)(9)

Elena stiffened her spine against the flood of pity. It would do no good to Celia now—and would get in the way of what Elena could do, the justice she could help attain. “Why did you ask me to come inside?” If she was to track the vampire, her best bet would be to begin at his last known position.

“The body was discovered floating in a small pond. It’s likely he bathed in it before he left.”

Elena jerked up her head. “You’re tell ing me he’s thinking ?” Because water was the sole factor that could confuse the bloodhound senses of the hunter-born. Vampires caught in the grip of bloodlust—the only thing that could explain the savagery of this attack—did not think. They rampaged with unstoppable violence, were most often caught while they gorged on the blood of their victims. “Is it”— another Uram? she finished, conscious that the darkest of angelic secrets could not be spoken aloud, not here.

“No.” Raphael’s voice was, if possible, even more gentle.

Cruelty wrapped in velvet, she thought. He was riding the razor’s edge of rage.

“Find his scent, Elena. This is the place where it will be strongest.”

He was right. Anything she got near the pond would be diluted. Here, he’d killed, perhaps shed some of his own blood if the victim had been able to claw at him as she fought for her life. Taking a deep breath, Elena shut out everything—including the icy knowledge that this could have been one of her sisters—and focused on the rich strokes of scent that saturated the room.

The easiest to identify was Raphael, her anchor.

Then the metal ic kiss of blood. And ... a stormy scent licked with fire.

Her eyes snapped open. “Jason was here?” Her ability to track angels continued to be wildly erratic, more often off than on, but she knew that combination of notes, knew also that it was rare for the black-winged angel to make a daylight appearance.

Yes.

Chill ed by the way Raphael stared unblinking at the pool of blood, she pushed aside the question of why Raphael’s spymaster had passed through here

—why, indeed, the Archangel of New York was on a scene that should’ve been filled with cops and hunters—and focused her senses once more. It was startling, what little effort it took to isolate the vampiric thread. Unlike most places in the state, this school was apparently free of vampiric employees, a humans-only zone.

No wonder Jeffrey had chosen it for his daughters.

But one vampire had invaded this sanctum, a vampire with a sickly sweet edge to his smell .

Burnt treacle . . . and slivers of glass, heavier notes of oak underneath.

Tugging on that thread, she angled her head toward the window. “That’s how he got out.” But she left the room through the door, knowing she’d never be able to squeeze out the same way, given her wings. She was aware of Raphael at her back as she found an exit and stepped outside, rounding ivy-covered wall s until she stood below the window.

That particular section of wall was clear of the dark green vine. “Place has high ceilings.” Which, since the room was on the third floor, equaled the window being a considerable distance off the ground. “How did he get up?” Most vamps wouldn’t have been able to jump that high. However ... She pressed her nose to the wall , drew in a breath.

Crushed glass, oak leaves.

Then she saw the streak of red by where she’d placed her right hand, palm-down.

Dropping it, she looked around her feet as she spoke. “He climbed up and down like a f*cking spider.” There was only a subset of vampires who could pull off that particular trick. “Should help narrow down his identity.”

“His name is Ignatius,” Raphael said to her surprise—just as she glimpsed droplets of dark liquid on the grass. “I felt his mind turn bloodred when I touched it.”

Elena wasn’t sure of Raphael’s range, but if he’d touched Ignatius’s mind, then there was something wrong here. “You weren’t able to execute him.” She followed the trail across the manicured green of the inner lawn, through the heavy archway carved out in the middle of the long school building at the other end, and into the woods that normal y provided a serene backdrop—but today seemed an ominous mass, the leaves dul beneath a sky that had shifted from azure to dirty gray in the minutes she’d been inside.

Not answering her implied question, Raphael rose into the air as she tracked Ignatius through the woods, her wings catching on branches and thorny bushes. Wincing at the uncomfortable sensations, she tucked them even tighter to her body but didn’t slow her progress through the trees. She hesitated at one point, certain she felt the tug of something to her right, but the trail of oak and glass was vivid straight ahead.

Shaking off the impulse to turn, explore, she continued the track. Jason’s black-winged form appeared out of the looming dark of the woods less than five minutes later—he stood unmoving as stone, guarding a body that lay beside the placid waters of a small pond.

The girl was still wearing her school uniform, her entire frame soaked. Her blouse should’ve been white. It was a nauseating salmon pink, and shredded as Elena knew her flesh would’ve been shredded. Strangling the pity that threatened to derail her, Elena didn’t move toward the body—her priority was to track the kil er, to make certain no other girl would end up a broken dol beside a pond that should’ve been a place of play, not a macabre bath flavored with death and horror.