“The hunter-born hate water.” It was no secret—not for a vampire as experienced as Janvier.
“But you’re not one of the bloodhounds,” Janvier pointed out. “Water doesn’t mask a vampire’s scent for you—you’re a tracker. You rely on your eyes.”
“Trackers hate water, too.” A snarl directed squarely at him. “It destroys the trail.”
“Hey, now,” he said, still in that easy, unhurried voice, “I took you through the bayou, sugar. Lots of damp earth—plenty of signs for a tracker to follow.”
“I had mold growing in my toes by the end of that hunt.”
“Now I find myself envious of mold—see what you do to me.” Teasing words, a gaze that stroked her with fire.
“You ever make me hunt you in that kind of damp again,” she said, feeling her stomach give a little twinge as his eyes moved over her, proprietary in a way they had no right to be, “I’ll make you eat the bloody mold.”
Janvier was still laughing when they walked up the final steps to find the door being held open by a small, wrinkled woman who was unquestionably human. Even if Ashwini hadn’t noticed the myriad other signs that proclaimed her mortality, the simple fact was the angels only accepted Candidates between the ages of twenty-five and forty. And once Made, a vampire was frozen in time—except, of course, for the gradual polish of a beauty no mortal would ever possess.
But there was another kind of beauty in this woman’s face, marked as it was by the experiences of a life lived to the fullest. A life still being lived that way, Ashwini thought, watching those bright blue eyes take in Janvier with a definite glint of female appreciation—one that didn’t dim as she invited them inside. “The master is waiting for you in the living area.”
“Will you show us the way, darlin’?”
The woman dimpled. “Of course. Please follow me.”
As they walked behind the older woman, Ashwini jabbed Janvier with her elbow. “Do you have no shame?”
“None whatsoever.”
An instant later they were being shown through doors large enough to accommodate an angel’s wings. The maid whispered away after letting them in, and while Ashwini’s hunter senses would never let her ignore the woman’s exit, it occupied only a very small part of her mind. Because Nazarach was waiting for them.
And if he was only a midlevel angel, then she was damn grateful she’d never been, and likely never would be, in the presence of an archangel.
The Atlantan angel was about Janvier’s height, with gleaming black skin and eyes of such a direct, piercing amber, it was as if they were lit from within. That illusion of light was power, of course, the power of an immortal. The incredible force of it lay like a shimmering film in his eyes, on his skin, and, most magnificently, on his wings.
“You like my wings,” the angel said, and his voice was deep, holding a thousand voices she tried not to hear, tried not to know.
“It’d be impossible to do otherwise.” She held those ghostly voices at bay with a will honed by a lifetime of fighting for her sanity. “They’re beyond beauty.” A burnished amber, Nazarach’s wings were not only unique, but so exquisitely formed, each feather so perfect, her mind had trouble accepting they existed. When he flew, she thought, he’d look like a blinding piece of the sun.
Nazarach gave her a small smile, and perhaps there was warmth in it, but it was nothing human, nothing mortal. “As it is impossible to do anything but appreciate you, Guild Hunter.”
The tiny hairs at the back of her neck stood up in screaming warning. “I’m here to do a job and I’ll do it well. If you want to play games, I’m not your girl.”
Janvier stepped forward before Nazarach could reply to what was surely a highly impertinent statement. “Ashblade,” he said, using the nickname he was responsible for coining, “is good at what she does. She’s not so good at playing by the rules.”
“So”—Nazarach turned his attention to Janvier—“you’re not dead yet, Cajun?”
“Despite Ash’s best attempts.”
The angel laughed, and the shattering power of it swept around the room, crawled over her skin. Age, death, ecstasy, and agony, it was all in that laugh, in Nazarach’s past. It crushed her, threatened to cut off her breath, leaving her trapped forever in the terror-choked hell that had sought to claim her since childhood.
3
It was the fear that saved her. Fueled by the threat of being imprisoned inside her own mind, she wrenched herself out of the endless whirlpool and back into the present. As the rush of air receded from her ears, she heard Nazarach say, “Perhaps I’ll ask you to rejoin my court, Janvier.”
Janvier gave a perfect bow, and for an instant, she saw him in the clothes of a bygone era, a stranger who knew how to play politics with as much manipulative ease as he played cards. Her hand fisted in instinctive rejection, but the next moment he laughed that lazy, amused laugh, and he was the vampire she knew again. “I never was much good as a courtier if you recall.”
“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.