Guild Hunter 01 - Angels' Blood

with the murders—perhaps a hunter could only track an archangel after he killed? But archangels killed many people. “We have a scent now and if he’s circling around you, we have a general idea of where to look for him. I need to know the outline of that area—the places where you spend most of your time.”
    “I’ll provide it,” Raphael said. “I want you to listen to Michaela’s story of how she received his offering and tell us how far Uram has devolved.”
    Elena looked at him, squinting against the brightness at his back. “How would I know?”
    “You’ve hunted vampires who’ve devolved.”
    “Yes, but Uram is no vamp.” She really wanted to know why and how in hell an archangel had gone so wrong. Her earlier anger at being told to run this blind rose anew.
    “For the purpose of this hunt,” Raphael said, steel in his tone, “he is. Michaela.”
    The female archangel leaned back in her chair. “I woke to the sound of something tapping against my window. I assumed it to be a trapped bird and got up to release it.”
    The image should’ve been incongruous with Michaela’s selfish beauty, but there was a powerful sense of truth in her words. Perhaps, to be “human” in her eyes, you had to have wings.
    “But,” the archangel continued, “when I reached the window, I found no bird. As I was about to turn away, my eye fell on the lawn and I noticed a lump sitting in the center. I thought it was an animal that had crawled there to die.” No shudder of distaste, rather a sense of sadness. Again, it felt true.
    Animals obviously ranked higher in Michaela’s worldview than humans. Having seen some of the things humans were capable of, Elena couldn’t disagree.
    Michaela took a deep breath. “I opened the balcony doors and asked one of the guards below to check on it. As you know, the lump turned out to be a burlap sack filled with seven human hearts.” A pause. “My guards tell me they were still warm.”

26
     
    Elena’s stomach didn’t roil this time. She’d expected as much. “This kind of stuff—taking trophies, taunting people, or in your case, giving gifts—is behavior similar to what you see in vampires after the bloodlust first takes control. At this point, they’re more animal than human.”
    “We knew that, hunter.” Michaela made the last word an insult, wiping out any warmth Elena might’ve felt over the archangel’s attitude toward nonhumans.
    “Then I can’t give you more.” She was out of her depth and it was no use pretending otherwise. No hunter in known history had tracked an archangel. “But I will tell you one thing—Uram is far bolder than any vampire. He was there tapping on your window.” She saw Michaela shiver, couldn’t blame her for being creeped out. “If he carries on at this speed, he’ll leave the animal stage behind and start thinking with high-level calculation within the week.”
    “So soon?” Raphael asked.
    She nodded. “Most devolved vamps’ first kills are messy, as this was. But it was secret, too. He knew he’d be caught if he didn’t hide it.”
    Raphael nodded. “And vampires in the grip of bloodlust don’t think that clearly.”
    “Over sixty percent are caught locked in bloodthrall at the site of their first kill.” A state between lust and stupefaction, it made the vampires insensate to everything around them. Elena had once walked right up to one—he hadn’t moved even when she neckleted him, a beatific smile on his face, his hands still buried in his victim’s chest. “I have a feeling,” she continued, shaking off the memory, “that Uram never went into bloodthrall. If he had, the hearts wouldn’t have been warm.”
    “That is . . . unexpected,” Raphael said. “Bloodthrall would have slowed him down.”
    “But even the worst vampiric killer doesn’t slaughter every night,” Elena began. “There should be a lull. He’s fed the lust—he’s bloated with power, with—”
    “You forget—he’s not a true vampire.” Raphael’s frame came into view as he shifted slightly. “He won’t stop. For now, it seems he hunts at night and during the early morning, so we have the daylight hours to regroup. If he devolves as fast as you predict, then he’ll start to hunt in daylight, too.”
    Elena’s eyes widened. “You’re saying he’s always in bloodlust.”
    “Yes.”
    “Dear God.” That made Uram a monster beyond comprehension.
    The scrape of a chair, the sound muffled by the carpet but