“Words mean squat. It’s the doing that counts.” And because he’d bled for her, she raised her hand to his cheek, putting them in perfect harmony. “Thank you.”
His expression shifted, becoming starkly intimate in the hush of the early-morning platform. “Stay with me. I’ll show you things that’ll make you laugh in delight, scream in passion, cry for the sheer joy of it.”
He knew her, she thought. Knew her well enough to offer her the wildest of rides. “You’ve started the doing,” she murmured, “but you’ve got a way to go.”
“Who hurt you, cher?” A gentle question, and yet she saw the chill intent in his eyes.
Unsurprised he’d understood what she’d never told anyone, she shook her head. “No one you can kill.”
A slow blink, lashes sweeping down to cover his eyes. When they swept back up, she expected to see the Cajun charmer again. But what met her was that same simmering darkness, that feeling he was ready to spill heart’s blood. “Do you love him?”
“I did once,” she answered honestly. “Now I feel nothing.”
“Liar.” His fingers moved on her skin, hot and real and mercifully quiet. “If you felt nothing, you wouldn’t run so far and hard.”
Her spine went stiff, but she held his gaze as the train rolled into the station. “Maybe I run because I like it. The freedom, the excitement, why would I give that up?”
“Part of you is the wind,” he murmured. “Oui, that is true. But even the wind sometimes rests.”
Shaking her head, she slid her hand around the back of his neck, soaking in the intrinsically male heat of his skin. “Then consider me an endless storm.”
The Cajun kissed exactly as he looked—raw and earthy and lazy… in the best way. The patience of him made her toes curl with the knowledge that he’d kiss her as exquisitely in other, softer, darker places. Agile hands stroking over her back, he held her to him as he explored her as thoroughly as she explored him. Decadent, sharp, wild, the taste of Janvier filled her mouth.
And when she pulled away, he bit her lower lip. “Until next time, Guild Hunter.”
“I’ll be holding a crossbow next time.” It was a certainty, given Janvier’s penchant for pissing off high-level angels.
A slow, so slow smile. “You might be my perfect woman.”
“If I am, you’re in serious trouble.” She stepped back, and up into the train carriage, on the heels of the final warning tone. “I don’t date vampires.”
“Who said anything about dating?” He gave her that wicked smile he seemed to save just for her. “I’m talking blood and sex and hunting.”
As the train pulled away, Ashwini knew she was in trouble. Because Janvier didn’t know her; he knew her. “Blood and sex and hunting.” It was one hell of a tempting proposition.
Fishing out her phone, she called the Guild Director. “Sara, I’ve changed my mind.”
“On?”
“The Cajun.”
“You sure?” Sara asked. “Last time you hunted him, you told me to keep you away from him or you’d end up in solitary confinement after throwing him into a lava pit.”
“Solitary confinement might be good for me.”
A pause. “Ash, you do realize you live in the Twilight Zone?”
The affection in the comment made her grin. “Normal is overrated. Just make sure I get any hunts where he’s involved.”
“You got it.” The Guild Director blew out a breath. “But I have to ask one thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Are you two flirting?”
Ashwini felt her lips curve. “If he’s not gator-bait by the next hunt… possibly.”
Angels’ Judgment
Cadre of Ten
The Cadre of Ten, the archangels who ruled the world in all the ways that mattered, met in an ancient keep deep in the Scottish Highlands. No one—human or vampire—would dare trespass on angelic territory, but even had they felt the need to give in to the suicidal urge, it would have proved impossible. The keep had been built by angels, wings a prerequisite for access.
Technology could’ve negated that advantage, but immortals didn’t survive eons by being left behind. The air above and around the keep was strictly controlled, both by a complex intrusion detection system and by units of highly trained angels. Today’s security had turned the sky into a cascade of wings—it wasn’t often that the ten most powerful beings in the world met in one place.
“Where is Uram?” Raphael asked, glancing at the incomplete semicircle of chairs.
Michaela was the one who answered. “He had a situation in his territory that required immediate attention.” Her lips curved as she spoke, and she was beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful woman who had ever lived . . . if you didn’t look beneath the surface.
“She makes Uram her puppet.” It was a murmur so low that Raphael knew it had been meant for him alone.
Glancing at Lijuan, he shook his head. “He’s too powerful. She might control his cock, but nothing else.”
Lijuan smiled, and it was a smile that held nothing of humanity. The oldest of the archangels had long passed the age where she could even pretend at being mortal. Now, when Raphael looked at her, he saw only a strange darkness, a whisper of worlds beyond either mortal or immortal ken.
“And are we not important?” A pointed question from Neha, the archangel who ruled India and its surrounds.
“Leave it, Neha,” Elijah said in that calm way of his. “We all know of Uram’s arrogance. If he chooses not to be here, then he forfeits the right to question our decisions.”
That soothed the Queen of Poisons. Astaad and Titus seemed not to care either way, but Charisemnon wasn’t so easily appeased. “He spits on the Cadre,” the archangel said, his aristocratic face drawn in sharply angry lines. “He may as well renounce his membership.”
“Don’t be stupid, Chari,” Michaela said, and the way she did it, the tone, made it clear she’d once had him in her bed. “An archangel doesn’t get invited to join the Cadre. We become Cadre when we become archangels.”
“She’s right.” Favashi spoke for the first time. The quietest of the archangels, she held sway over Persia, and was so good at remaining unnoticed that her enemies forgot about her. Which was why she ruled as they lay in their graves.
“Enough,” Raphael said. “We’re here for a reason. Let’s get to it so we can return to our respective territories.”
“Where is the mortal?” Neha asked.
“Waiting outside. Illium flew him up from the lowlands.” Raphael didn’t ask Illium to bring their visitor inside. “We’re here because Simon, the mortal, is growing old. The American chapter of the Guild will need a new director within the next year.”
“So let them choose one.” Astaad shrugged. “What does it matter to us as long as they do their job?”
That job happened to be a critical one. Angels might Make vampires, but it was the Guild Hunters who ensured those vampires obeyed their hundred-year Contract. Humans signed the Contract easily enough, hungry for immortality. However, fulfilling the terms was another matter—a great many of the newly Made had changes of heart after a few paltry years of service.
And the angels, despite the myths created around their immortal beauty, were not agents of some heavenly entity. They were rulers and businessmen, practical and merciless. They did not like losing their investments. Hence, the Guild and its hunters.
“It matters,” Michaela said in a biting tone, “because the American and European branches of the Guild are the most powerful. If the next director can’t do his job, we face a rebellion.”
Raphael found her choice of words interesting. It betrayed something about the vampires under her tender care that they’d seize any chance of escape.
“I grow tired of this.” Titus stirred his muscular bulk, his skin gleaming blue-black. “Bring in the human and let us hear him.”