Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

over.”
    Her curves were distracting. Her sensuality, lethal.
    Do your job, Guardian, he told himself.
    He hauled her to standing. The back of her dress was shredded from the broken glass. His arms, too, were bloodied from their fight. Still, she struggled.
    From his back pocket, he produced the handcuffs. Snapped them on her wrists.
    The hiss she let out was like the sound of a cat being skinned alive.
    He patted down her clothing, searching for concealed weapons. Slipped his hand into her pocket. Took out a credit card and a tube of lipstick, looked quickly at both and put them back. Ran his hands up her legs, under her dress. Tried to ignore what he felt there.
    “This is assault,” she said coolly. “I don’t know who you are, but you are violating my rights.”
    “Human rights are reserved for human beings. You forfeited them when you ceased to be mortal.”
    He held the glass vial dangling between her breasts. Yanked. The gold chain broke. He shoved the object in his pocket.
    He grabbed a silk shawl from a display stand at the front of the shop and wiped the blood from his forearms, then tossed it around her shoulders to hide the damage. Not that a human bystander’s opinion mattered at this point. But still. A bloody shawl was better than her back, shredded to ribbons by the glass.
    He tugged her along. “Come with me.”
    “Where are you taking me?”
    “Somewhere you won’t make more trouble.”
    * * *
     
    Luciana realized she had made a grave error. Her hands bound in the darkness, he hauled her back down the Street of Assassins.
    She could feel the blood dripping down her back.
    Every soul stopped to look. Every motion in the street stilled. Not a single being moved, not a goblin or a ghost. They cowered in his presence. It was as if they believed he was too powerful to touch.
    And then they swung back into action.
    This man was no rookie. The energy pulsing from him made her weak, and it sent a signal to every soul on this street: don’t dare to cross me. She reeled from that power, feeling her own energy sapped, draining away. She stumbled in the street as her heel caught a cobblestone, fell to her knees as the asshole angel dragged her along.
    He looked down, merciless.
    “You brought this on yourself,” he said.
    “Stronzo di merda,” she whispered, biting her lip against the pain. I will not cry. I will not cry. “Brutto figlio di puttana bastardo.”
    “What?”
    “‘Ugly bastard son of a whore’—”
    “I get the drift,” he said. “Next time I won’t bother asking for a translation.”
    “I am a baroness and a noble daughter of Venice. Do you have any idea who I am?”
    He knelt, brushed her hair back, his hand wet with blood, hers or his, it no longer mattered. In her ear he whispered, “I know exactly who you are. And I know exactly what you’ve done.”
    A wave of shame washed over her; shame like nausea, rocking her to the core.
    Or was it the pain from the glass embedded in her back? She could no longer tell.
    He hoisted her up, heaved her over his shoulder like a laborer hauling a beam of wood in the Arsenale. Her body screamed. She didn’t have the energy to fight anymore.
    He spoke her thoughts aloud. “You can scream all you want. The creatures here won’t help you. They’re too chickenshit. Any human would be completely ineffectual. Nobody here can do anything for you.”
    He was right.
    Not because anyone or any thing here knew who or what he was.
    Simply because they could sense his power.
    She would have to think of a way out of this herself.
    She would get herself out of this situation.
    Just as she had always gotten herself out of every situation in the past.
    And once I have, I will make him pay.

Chapter Four
     
    W hen he set her on her feet again, they were standing in front of a shabby pensione . Luciana looked up at the weathered awning, and then her eye caught the relief carved into the stone on the wall beside the door.
    San Giorgio slaying his dragon.
    Just another martyr in this city carved full of them, she thought viciously.
    According to legend, Saint George had killed the dragon that would have devoured a village. All over Venice, there were statues and images of him. His was an image that the angels sometimes used to communicate with each other, marking doorways and buildings.
    Here, she knew exactly what it meant.
    The angel had brought her to the Company safe house.
    Talk of this place had existed amongst the demons of Venice for