Guild Hunter 01 - Angels' Blood

wasn’t a result of the toxin putrefying his mind, sending his powers out of control.
    Which left him with the unknown.
    He swore in a low, ancient language long dead. He couldn’t ask Neha, the Queen of Poisons. She’d see a weakness and immediately move to strike. None of the Cadre who might know the answer could be trusted in this except for Lijuan and Elijah. Lijuan had no interest in petty power. She’d gone too far, changed into something not wholly of this world. Elijah, Raphael wasn’t sure about, but the other male was the scholar among them.
    The problem was, Lijuan eschewed modern conveniences like the phone. She lived in a mountain compound hidden deep within China. He’d either have to fly to her or . . . His fist tightened even further. He couldn’t leave his city while Uram roamed. Which left only one real choice.
    As he turned to stride out, his eye fell on the message tube Elena had left behind. Destiny’s Rose was an ancient treasure, one he’d earned as a young angel in the service of an archangel of ages long past. Legend said that it had been created by the combined power of the first Cadre. Raphael didn’t know the truth of that, but it was undeniably priceless. He’d given it to Elena for reasons he didn’t entirely understand. But she would have it. It bore her name now.
    Grabbing the tube, he headed up to the penthouse and, specifically, to the room of pure black in the dead center. The human covens would see that room as evil. They saw darkness as evil. But sometimes, darkness was nothing more than a tool, neither good nor evil.
    It was the soul of the man using the tool that changed things. Raphael’s hand clenched on the message tube. For the first time in centuries, he wasn’t sure who he was. Not good. He’d never been that. But neither had he been evil . . . until today.

Poison
     
    They were fools, all of them. They thought he was going to die.
    He laughed, despite the pain that sliced through his eyes and into his body, agony that threatened to turn his bowels to water, his bones to so much pulp. He laughed until it was the only sound in the universe, the only truth.
    Oh, no, he wasn’t going to die. He was going to survive this trial they called poison. A lie. An effort to consolidate their own power. Not only was he going to survive, he was going to come out of it a god. And when he was done, the Cadre of Ten would tremble and the earth run dark with rivers of blood.
    Rich, nourishing, sensual . . . blood.

12
     
    Elena walked out the Tower door and kept going, ignor ing the taxi standing by. An incandescent anger, richer, deeper, more deadly than anything she’d ever before felt, fired through her nerve endings, causing pain but also keeping her alive, keeping her going.
    The bastard, the goddamn bastard!
    Tears pricked. She refused to let them rise. To do that would be to admit that she’d expected something more from Raphael, something human .
    Catching a familiar scent, she spun on her heel, knife in hand. “Go home, vamp.” Her voice was molten fury.
    Dmitri gave a courtly bow. “Be that I could do as my lady asks. Unfortunately”—he straightened, his shades reflecting her own angry image back at her—“I have other orders.”
    “Do you always do as your master commands?”
    His lips thinned. “I stay with Raphael out of loyalty.”
    “Yeah, right. Like a little puppy dog.” She dug in her claws, in the mood to draw blood. “Do you sit up and beg when he asks, too?”
    Dmitri was suddenly in front of her, having moved so fast he was gripping her knife hand before she could draw breath. “Don’t push me, hunter. I’m the head of Raphael’s security force. If it were up to me, you’d be strung up in chains, screaming as your flesh was flayed off your bones.”
    The erotic scent of him made the image even more barbaric. “Didn’t Raphael tell you to stop the scent games?” She dropped a knife down from her arm sheath and into the palm of her weaker hand. Weaker, not weak. All hunters could fight with both hands.
    “That was last night.” He bent closer, the planes of his face exquisitely drawn, the curve of his lips touched with a hint of cruelty. “Today, he’s probably extremely pissed with you. He won’t mind if I take a discreet bite.” A hint of fang as he flashed her on purpose.
    “Right here on the street?” she asked, looking up at the line of his throat, vividly conscious of the push of his erection.
    He didn’t bother to