Guild Hunter 01 - Angels' Blood

and returned them to their masters—the angels. Some people called her kind bounty hunters, but according to her Guild card, she was “Licensed to Hunt Vampires & Assorted Others”—which made her a vampire hunter, with the attendant benefits, including hazard pay. That pay was very healthy. It had to be to compensate for the fact that hunters occasionally had their jugulars torn open.
    Still, Elena decided she needed a pay raise after her calf muscle started protesting. She’d been stuck in a cramped corner of an alley in the Bronx for the past two hours, a too tall female with pale, almost white hair and silver eyes. The hair was a pain in the butt. According to her sometimes friend Ransom, she might as well wear a sign announcing her presence. Since dyes wouldn’t work on it for longer than two minutes, Elena had a great collection of knit caps.
    She was tempted to pull her current one down over her nose, but had a feeling that would only intensify the malodorous “ambience” of this dank piece of New York City. That led her to thinking about the virtues of nose plugs—
    Something rustled behind her.
    She swiveled . . . to come face-to-face with a stalking cat, its eyes reflecting silver in the darkness. Satisfied the animal was what it seemed, she returned her attention to the sidewalk, wondering if her eyes shone as freakily as that cat’s. It was a good thing she’d inherited dark gold skin from her Moroccan grandmother or she’d have resembled a ghost.
    “Where the hell are you?” she muttered, reaching down to rub at her calf. This vamp had led her on a merry chase—through his own sheer stupidity. He didn’t know what he was doing, which made him a little hard to second-guess.
    Ransom had once asked her if it bothered her to round up helpless vampires and drag their sorry asses back to a life of virtual slavery. He’d been laughing hysterically at the time. No, it didn’t bother her. Just like it didn’t bother him. The vamps chose that slavery—of a hundred years’ duration—the instant they petitioned an angel to Make them almost-immortal. If they had stayed human, if they had gone to their graves in peace, then they wouldn’t have found themselves bound by a contract signed in blood. And while the angels did take advantage of their position, a contract was a contract.
    A flash of light in the street.
    Bingo!
    There was the target, chomping away on a cigar and boasting on his cell phone about how he was a Made man now and no prissy angel was going to tell him what to do. Even with several feet of distance between them, she could smell the sweat pooling under his armpits. The vampirism hadn’t yet advanced enough to melt away the fat he wore like a spare coat, and he thought he could run out on a contract with an angel?
    Idiot.
    Walking out, she pulled off her knit cap and stuffed it in her back pocket. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders in a soft cloud, distinctive and bright. It wasn’t a risk. Not tonight. She might have been well known by the locals, but this vampire had a distinct Australian accent. He’d recently arrived from Sydney—and his master wanted him back in that city, pronto.
    “Got a light?”
    The vampire jumped and dropped his phone. Elena barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes. He wasn’t even fully formed—the canines he’d flashed in surprise were only baby teeth. No wonder his master was pissed. The bonehead had to have scuttled after not much more than a year or so of service.
    “Sorry,” she said with a smile as he retrieved the phone and weighed her up. She knew what he saw. A lone female with bimbo blonde hair, dressed in black leather jeans and a form-fitting long-sleeved top in the same color, no visible weapons.
    Because he was young and stupid, the image made him relax. “Sure, sweet thang.” He reached into his pocket for the lighter.
    That was when Elena leaned forward, one hand sweeping behind her back and under her top. “Tut-tut. Mr. Ebose is very disappointed in you.” She’d retrieved and locked the necklet into place before he processed the meaning of that huskily spoken censure. His eyes bulged red, but instead of screaming, he stood silently in place. A hunter’s necklet had a way of freezing a man. Fear was a live thing skittering across his face.
    She’d have felt sorry for him if she hadn’t known that he’d torn out four human throats in the course of his escape. That was not acceptable. The angels protected