Guild Hunter 01 - Angels' Blood

what it was that she was seeing. Her mind simply refused to put the pieces together. And there were so many pieces. Torn, distorted, impossible pieces. Her stomach twisted, the nausea from the head injury she’d sustained when Uram smashed her face into the dash, merging with the horror of the here and now.
    She fought it, refusing to reward the monster with her terror. But it was hard. They’d all been wrong—Sara, Ransom, even Raphael. Uram hadn’t taken fifteen victims. He’d taken others, people who wouldn’t be missed. Rotting limbs, a gleaming rib cage, evidence of his vicious madness littered the room. A room without light, without air. A cell. A crypt. A—
    Snap out of it!
    It was her hunter sense, the thing that had marked her from birth.
    Swallowing her panic, she focused, and realized the room wasn’t, in fact, pitch-dark. Uram had blacked out the windows but some light—too sharp, too white to be natural, which meant she’d been out long enough for night to fall—seeped in around the edges. It was that light that had allowed her to see the sickening truth of the room. Torn bodies thrown about like so much garbage. But not all were in pieces. Against the opposite wall, chains locked around his wrists, she saw the withered body of someone who’d once been human.
    Then that dried-out husk blinked and she realized he was still alive. “Jesus!” It came out before she could stop herself.
    The monster in front of her, the thing that wore the shell of an archangel, followed her gaze. “I see you’ve made Robert’s acquaintance. He was a loyal one, followed me across the oceans without complaint. Did you not, Bobby?”
    Elena watched the cruel humor on Uram’s face and realized she’d never understood true evil until this moment. Robert was a vampire, that much was clear. No human that desiccated would still be alive—it looked as if the vampire had lost every ounce of moisture in him but for his large, glistening eyes. Eyes that pleaded with her for deliverance.
    Uram turned back to her, his own eyes—a vivid, beautiful green—dancing with laughter. “He thought he was special because I took him with me. Unfortunately, I forgot about him for a while.” That power-filled gaze became angry, tinged with red. The sparkling green was suddenly putrid.
    Elena stayed very, very still in the corner where he’d dumped her, wondering if he’d thought to take her weapons. She couldn’t feel anything on her body but maybe he’d missed one or two—like the ice pick-thin knife in her hair, or the flat blade that slid into a sheath built into her shoe. She flexed her toes and felt the reassuring firmness of her boots. Ransom had given her the boots as a gag gift—she’d never loved the idiot more than she did at that moment.
    Uram’s eyes bored into her. “But my loyal Bobby did come in useful”—back to Robert—“didn’t you? He made a most appreciative audience for my little games.”
    Elena saw the way the vampire’s hands curled in the chains, the way his wasted body flinched, and felt her fury ignite. Uram had to know what he was doing—vampires were almost immortal, but they needed blood to truly survive. By not allowing him to feed, he’d effectively caused Robert’s body to eat itself. The vampire would never actually die, not of starvation. But his every breath had to be agony by now. And if this went on much longer . . .
    Elenas thoughts filled with the one and only case of vampiric starvation she’d ever encountered. It had been in a textbook she’d studied during her final year at Guild Academy. That vampire—S. Matheson—had been caught in a family feud involving his sire. Someone had locked him in a concrete coffin and buried him in the foundations of a building under construction.
    He’d been found ten years later.
    Alive.
    If you could call it that. The contractor who’d unwittingly smashed open the coffin thought he’d found a skeleton, and called the authorities. The M.E. was excited by the prospect of mummified remains. He arrived at the site with a small crime scene crew and they began shooting photos, taking measurements as the workmen watched. Then one of the crime scene techs cut her finger while turning the head of the skeleton and before she knew it, she’d lost the finger, the bone sliced clean in half by one razor-sharp fang.
    The paramedics had been called. S. Matheson’s body had regenerated under the constant flow of transfusions. But his brain had