Guild Hunter 01 - Angels' Blood

turn.”
    “Yeah?” she said, forcing her thoughts back to the here and now.
    “Damn Cajun.”
    “Uh-oh.”
    “I finally get within a block of him and all of a sudden, he’s come to an ‘understanding’ with the angel who put out the track.” Her eyes narrowed. “One of these days, I’m going to turn him into gator-bait.”
    Elena grinned. “Then where would the rest of us get our entertainment?”
    “Fuck you.” Said with a grin before she yawned, lifted up her arms, and stretched, sinuous as a cat. “I like sleeping down here.”
    “What, you like the ambience?” She rolled her eyes. “How was Europe anyway?”
    “Sucked. I was in Uram’s territory.”
    Elena’s nape pricked. This wasn’t coincidence—Ash was a little bit spooky in her prescience. “How’s the situation there?”
    The other hunter shrugged, the movement lithe and unconsciously graceful. According to the Guild rumor mill, she’d been a trained dancer with a prestigious company before deciding to take up hunting. Ransom had once asked her to perform. It had taken two weeks for his black eyes to fade.
    “Uram’s fallen off the grid,” she now said. “The locals are scared of their own shadows—they think he’s spying on them.”
    Elena caught the glint in the other hunter’s eye. “But you don’t think so?”
    “Something’s hinky. No one’s seen his assistant, Robert Syles, for a while either. And Bobby likes the TV cameras.” Ashwini shrugged. “My guess is that they’re doing some hunting of their own. Maybe angels. We’ll hear about it soon enough.” Another yawn.
    “You’d better get back to sleep.”
    “Nah, I’m all recharged now. But I do have to shower—got to head out again in an hour.” She turned. “Oh, hey, El, one other thing I picked up—seems like they found more than a few decapitated bodies around the time Uram went AWOL. It looks like the poor buggers were his servants. Must’ve been some temper tantrum. Lucky we don’t have to hunt these bastards.”
    Elena nodded, feeling weak. “Yeah, lucky.”

16
     
    Raphael stood outside the nondescript little house in a suburb of New Jersey, silently applauding the Guild Director’s cleverness. The woman had left her beautifully restored brownstone for this little wooden house surrounded by a hundred other such houses. Her home looked utterly ordinary except that he knew it was a fortress. He also knew that the director and her husband, both extremely experienced hunters, were taking turns at keeping an eye out for vampires, weapons close at hand.
    Of course, to shoot, they had to see. And he was simply not there to their senses—he’d wrapped the glamour around himself the second he dived off the balcony of his penthouse suite and into the fading light of Manhattan, his power almost completely restored. True darkness had fallen during his flight and now he looked through windows that shimmered gold.
    Light. Warmth. Illusion.
    The seemingly ordinary surburban yard in front of him was set with sensors, likely connected to booby traps that could be set off from inside the house. Raphael guessed there was a basement leading to a hidden exit—no hunter would ever allow her family to be trapped.
    If he hadn’t been in the Quiet, he might’ve been impressed. The security was brilliant, would hold perfectly well against a high-level vampire, though probably not Dmitri. He was far too experienced. But even Dmitri would have had to dodge the weapons. Raphael, on the other hand, didn’t even have to step foot inside the house.
    But you should, a primeval, reptilian part of his mind whispered, you should teach them a lesson, teach them that no one stands against an archangel and comes out the winner.
    He considered the instruction with the chill reason of his current emotional state and disregarded it. The Guild Director was intelligent and good at her job. It made no sense for Raphael to kill her—such an action would throw the Guild into chaos, during which a considerable number of dissatisfied vampires would try to escape from their masters. Some might even succeed because the hunters would be too broken up by the death of their director to be effective. Humans were so weak.
    None of yours will escape, that voice whispered again, a voice he only ever heard during the Quiet. They wouldn’t dare. Nobody disobeys you, not after we made an example out of Germaine.
    Germaine was now somewhere in Texas, but the vampire had never forgotten his