Guild Hunter 01 - Angels' Blood

dripping,” she said, realizing the sound wasn’t in her head. Horror choked off her breath but she made herself move forward, through the gloom and toward the very end of the cavernous space.
    The nightmare came into sight slowly.
    At first, Elena couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t figure out what it was that she was seeing. Everything was in the wrong place. It was as if some sculptor had gotten his pieces mixed up, stuck them into place while blindfolded. That leg, the bone, it had been driven through a woman’s sternum, her torso ending in a bloody stump. And that one, she had beautiful blue eyes but they were in the wrong place, staring out at Elena from the gaping maw of her neck.
    Drip.
    Drip.
    Drip.
    The blood, it was everywhere. She glanced down in fresh horror, terrified she was standing in it. Her relief was crushing when she saw the rivulets were sluggish, easy to avoid. But the bodies continued to drip, hanging from a tangle of rope like the most macabre of puzzles. Now that she’d looked down, she didn’t want to look back up.
    “Elena.” The rustle of Raphael’s wings.
    “A minute,” she whispered, her voice raw.
    “You don’t need to look,” he told her. “Just follow the scent.”
    “I need an example of his scent before I can go anywhere,” she reminded him. “What he gave Michaela—”
    “Michaela destroyed the package. She was in hysterics. Do what you can here. We’ll visit her afterward.”
    Nodding, she swallowed. “Tell your vampires to vacate the area around the warehouse—at least a hundred yards in every direction.” There was too much sensory input, as if the sheer amount of blood was amplifying everything, even her own hunter abilities.
    “It’s being done.”
    “If any of them are like Dmitri, they need to get out completely.”
    “There are none. Do you wish to scent those who came inside, for elimination purposes?”
    It was a good idea but she knew that if she turned her back on this madness, she’d never return. “Did any of them spend a lot of time near the bodies?”
    A pause. “Illium took on the task of determining if any had survived.”
    “It’s obvious they’re dead.”
    “The ones on the floor—their fate wasn’t immediately clear.”
    She’d been so horrified by the hanging bodies that she hadn’t paid attention to the pile below. Or perhaps she hadn’t wanted to see, to know. Now she did and wished she hadn’t. Unlike the nightmare above, these bodies looked as if they were sleeping, one on top of another. “Were they arranged like that?”
    “Yes.” A new voice.
    She didn’t turn, guessing it to be Illium. “Are your wings blue?” she asked, coating her pity and sorrow in a casing of dark humor. These three girls below, they were so young, their bodies smooth, uncharted by age.
    “Yes,” Illium said. “But my cock isn’t, in case you were wondering.”
    She almost laughed. “Thank you.” That comment had snapped through the nightmare, allowing her to think. “Your scent won’t interfere with my senses.” Her nose was ten times better than that of most humans, but when it came to tracking, she was a bloodhound attuned only to vampire. Or that was her normality. This . . .
    The sound of footsteps retreating. She waited until she heard the door close. “You took his feathers and he remains with you?” Her eyes traced the bodies. A symphony of unbroken, tangled limbs and curved spines, unmarked but for the gray chill of death.
    “Others would have taken his wings.”
    An angel without wings. It made her remember how she’d shot Raphael. “Why are they so washed out?” Their race was immaterial. Chalk white, dull mahogany, it mattered little. All three girls in the pile were pale in a way that screamed—“Vampire. A vampire fed from them. Drained them.” She went to step forward, halted. “The M.E. hasn’t been here. I can’t touch them.”
    “Do what you must. Ours are the only eyes that’ll see this.”
    She swallowed. “And their families?”
    “Would you leave them with this image of suffering?” A cold blade of anger in every word. “Or a story of a sudden plane crash or car accident in which the body was destroyed beyond recognition?”
    Drip.
    Drip.
    Drip.
    Deluged with blood and death on every side, her brain struggled to fight the memories of old horrors, things no amount of time would wipe away. “He didn’t drain the others. Just these three.”
    “The others were for play.”
    And