Guild Hunter 01 - Angels' Blood

familiarity of his scent. “Promising start.”
    He took off the sunglasses and she got the full impact of his eyes. Bright green and slitted like a snake’s. “Boo.”
    She didn’t jump—because she was too stupefied by what she was seeing. “Fancy contact lenses don’t scare me.”
    His pupils contracted. Oh. Wow. “I was Made by Neha.”
    “The Queen of Poisons?”
    “The Queen of Snakes.” Smile slow and definitely unfriendly, he put the sunglasses back on and stood aside to let her enter the car.
    She did so only because of his first words to her. So long as Raphael had this one on a leash, they’d get along fine. The second that leash slipped, she had a feeling she’d need every one of the weapons strapped to her body. “What’s your name?” she asked as her “driver” got in.
    “To you—Death.”
    “Very funny.” She stared at the back of his neck. “Why do you want to kill me?”
    “I’m a member of the Seven.”
    She suddenly realized why she recognized his scent—he’d been in her apartment the night she shot Raphael. He was the one who’d held her with her arms pinned behind her back. No wonder he wanted to gut her. “Look, Raphael and I have sorted things out. Not your problem.”
    “We protect Raphael from threats even he might not yet see.”
    “Great.” She blew out a breath. “But . . . did you go inside the warehouse?”
    The temperature dropped. “Yes.”
    “Killing me is not the priority,” she said softly, but she was no longer speaking to him. “Where are you taking me?”
    “To Raphael.”
    She watched the streets pass by and realized they were heading out of Manhattan and toward the George Washington Bridge. “How long have you been with Raphael?”
    “You ask a lot of questions for a dead woman.”
    “What can I say? I prefer to die well-informed.”
    A short distance over the bridge and she might as well have been in Vermont. Trees dominated the skyline, veiling the expensive homes that lined this particular stretch, most of them with clifftop outlooks and ridiculous buffers of land. She’d heard rumors the driveways were longer than some roads, and the fact that she couldn’t glimpse a single house from the car tended to support that theory.
    The driver turned in front of a pair of ornate metal gates and pressed something on the dash. The gates opened soundlessly, belying their apparent age. Elena sucked in a breath as they headed into the corridor of trees. This area was marked on maps as the Fort Lee / Palisades region, but even non-New Yorkers called it the Angel Enclave. Elena didn’t know anyone who’d ever been beyond the gates that guarded each magnificent property. Angels were very private when it came to their homes.
    The driveway was long. It was only as they turned that she caught sight of the large house at the end. Painted an elegant white, it had obviously been built for a being with wings—open balconies ringed the second and third floors. The roof was sloped, but not so much that an angel couldn’t land.
    Huge windows took up most of the wall space, and though she couldn’t fully see it, it appeared as if the left-hand side might feature a stunning creation of stained glass. But even that wasn’t the true glory—crawling up along the sides of the house were what looked like a hundred rosebushes, all amazingly still in full bloom. “It looks like something out of a fairy tale.” The dark and dangerous kind.
    The driver almost choked on his laughter. “Do you expect fairies inside?” He brought the car to a halt.
    “I’m hunter-born, vampire. I never believed in fairies.” Stepping out, she closed the door. “You coming in?”
    “No.” He leaned back against the hood, arms folded, mirrored sunglasses reflecting back her own image. “I’ll wait here—unless you plan to start screaming. Then I want a ring-side seat.”
    “First Dmitri and now you.” She shook her head. “Is pain really what floats the boat of all the old vamps?”
    Another smile, this one with a deliberate hint of fang. “Come into my parlor, little hunter, and I’ll show you.”
    Come here, little hunter. Taste.
    Cold slivered through her, chasing away the sun’s warmth. Not responding to the vampire’s provocation, she grabbed her bag and strode to the front door, able to hear the murmur of the Hudson in the background. She wondered if the house had a water view, or if the trees blocked it. Probably didn’t matter to a being who could fly up