Guild Hunter 01 - Angels' Blood

echoes of Uram’s trail instead. “Either that or we just missed him.” Wondering if Uram had broken in, she checked the door and found it locked. Her brow furrowed as she concentrated. “The scent’s not that strong by the door.”
    She took several steps back and turned in a slow circle. There! Squeezing around the side of the building, she made her way to the back, fear, anger, and the thrill of the hunt thrumming in her blood. The parking lot was empty but that wasn’t what held her interest. A small door at the back lay open, swinging gently to and fro in the light breeze.
    Heart in her throat, she followed the scent and entered. She didn’t have to go far.
    Geraldine lay in a crumpled heap by the doorway, as if she’d been dumped in a hurry. Sensing life, Elena went down on her haunches and—“Oh, Jesus!” Geraldine’s throat was slashed, but she was conscious, her eyes full of terror. Elena didn’t know how the hell she was still alive.
    “Hold on.” She fumbled with her cell phone. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
    “Don’t.” Raphael’s shadow filled the doorway, blocking all light. “I’ll have Illium take her to a healer. He’s almost here.”
    She met his eyes, knew she didn’t have time to argue. “Fine.” Her tone asked for a promise the other woman wouldn’t be harmed.
    “We’ll have to remove her memories.” Unsaid were the words, if she lives.
    Geraldine coughed as Raphael gathered her up in his arms. “V-vam—” It was more air than sound, her hand clamped tight around her neck, but Elena understood. Not an accusation—a request. Before she could say anything, however, Raphael was gone.
    Elena drew in the scents around her and realized this was as far inside as Uram had come. Stepping back out into the parking lot, she circled out from the museum, trying to find another marker. Nothing. The bastard had dumped Geraldine and flown when Elena and Raphael had gotten too close. She was back at the museum by the time Raphael returned. “Your cleanup crew will have to work overtime today.”
    “It’s necessary.”
    “Fly me to Michaela’s.”
    “You sound very sure he’ll head that way.”
    “Geraldine was wearing a diamond ring when I met her yesterday. It was missing today, and from the white band of skin on her finger, I don’t think she ever took it off.”
    “It’ll be easier if I carry you.” Seeing the sense in that, she nodded and Raphael picked her up, one arm around her back, the other under her knees. Glamour spread like water across her skin.
    “Did you do it?” she asked as he rose, holding on tight and keeping her eyes closed against the mind-bending sight of her bones disappearing into thin air. “Start the process of turning Geraldine into a vampire?”
    “No.”
    “Why not? She probably won’t survive otherwise. And she’d be happy to be one. A win-win situation.” Wind laced with the whispered promise of more rain whipped through her hair, stroked her cheeks.
    “You’re asking for forbidden knowledge again.”
    “You put me in the path of a monster—not just me, but people even peripherally related to me—” Panic hit her. “Sara, my sister!”
    “We’ve alerted everyone close to you that they might be targeted by a vampire.”
    She gripped him harder. “Won’t do much good against an archangel, will it?”
    “No. The only thing that’ll stop him is death.”
    “How will you kill him?”
    “Rip out his heart and shove my power through the hole in his torso, tearing him apart from the inside out.”
    She swallowed at the graphic description. “Can he do the same to you?”
    “He is an archangel.”
    In other words, yes. Fear clawed at her heart, fear for a being who’d lived more lifetimes than she could imagine. “Why can an archangel only be killed by another archangel?”
    “As we age, we gain power—including the power to end the life of an immortal.” And perhaps, Raphael thought, recalling Lijuan’s coy hints, the power to give life, too. But not a life that was anything close to what life should be. “It’s one of the prerequisites of being in the Cadre of Ten. We must be able to destroy each other if the need arises.”
    “And that’s not too much information?”
    “You would’ve guessed.” Her intelligence was strong, stubborn, relentless. In all his centuries of living, he’d never met a warrior who challenged him as she did. “The female we found, who is she?”
    “Geraldine, my father’s