Guild Hunter 01 - Angels' Blood

know too much.” She held her ground. “This isn’t about protecting me—it’s about protecting the archangels.”
    “To trust a mortal is the ultimate in foolishness. It’s what cost Illium his feathers.”
    Oh, he knew exactly how to get to her. “I’m not just a mortal. I’m Elena Deveraux, Guild Hunter and the woman you pulled into this shit. The least you can do is tell me why.”
    “No.” A flat declaration made by the Archangel of New York. “Nothing you say will sway me. No mortal can know. Not even the one I want to fuck.”
    The cold place had filled with lust. Now it filled with pure fury. “That puts me in my place, doesn’t it?”
    The bastard kissed her. She was so mad, she bit him hard enough to draw blood. Raphael pulled back, lip already beginning to swell. “We are no longer even, Elena. You’re now in debt.”
    “You can deduct it from my slow and painful death.” She dropped her leg from his waist. “It’s time to talk murder.”
    He leaned in, caging her with his arms. “You’re holding a knife again.”
    She clenched her hand around the handle. “You drive me to violence.” Sliding the knife back into her boot, she folded her arms and tried not to think about how good he smelled. “What did you do with the survivor?”
    “Dmitri has taken her to our healers, our doctors.”
    “Because she might be infected. With what?”
    “Uram’s madness.”
    She was so shocked at getting a straight answer that it took her close to a minute to respond. “That’s not possible. Madness isn’t catching.”
    “Uram’s brand may be.”
    Christ. “But she’s human.”
    Raphael’s eyes flamed cobalt. “She was. Now the doctors will tell us what she’s become.” He paused. “We know she ingested some of Uram’s blood—it could’ve been by accident but more likely, he made her feed from him.”
    She didn’t give in to pity. That woman—girl, really—had survived a monster intent on destroying everything she was. She deserved a fucking medal for courage, not pity. “If she is infected, will you kill her?”
    “Yes.”
    Elena wanted to hate him for that, but she couldn’t. “Four years ago,” she found herself saying, “there was a rash of killings on the banks of the Mississippi. Young boys strangled; their eyes removed.”
    “A human.”
    “Yes. A hunter.” Bill James had been her friend once upon a time, her trainer before that. “We—me, Ransom, and Sara—had to find and execute him.” Hunters always took care of their own.
    A cool whisper of a breeze as Raphael unfurled his wings and curled them back in. “So many nightmares in your head.”
    “They make me who I am.”
    “Did you kill this hunter?”
    “Yes.” It had come down to the two of them. “Sara was badly injured, Ransom too far away, and Bill was about to kill a terrified young boy. So I stabbed him through the heart.” No time to get her gun, so much blood everywhere, the look of betrayal in Bill’s eyes as his heart pulsed one last time, a chaos of memory. Now she looked up into another pair of eyes. “If that girl’s become a monster, she needs to die.”
    “Am I a monster, Elena?”
    She looked into that perfect face and saw the echoes of cruelty, of time. “Not yet,” she whispered. “But you could be.”
    His jaw was a harsh line. “It’s a symptom of age—cruelty.”
    It hurt her to know that the humanity in Raphael—buried deep, but there—might one day cease to exist. Yet at the same time, she couldn’t help but be glad for his immortality. Someone this magnificent shouldn’t die. “Tell me about the Quiet.”
    His wings extended to their full width. “We must go to Michaela’s home and see if you can pick up a scent—there’s a good chance he spent hours watching her before today.”
    She blew out a frustrated breath. “Fine. We flying?” Her heart hitched—she was becoming used to being carried in Raphael’s arms, the sound of his wings steady and powerful.
    “No,” he said, lips curving as if he’d read her excitement. “Michaela’s American home is next door.”
    “Convenient.” For sneaking into Raphael’s bed.
    He finally moved enough that she could hop down. “Michaela has been many things through the centuries—scholar, courtesan, muse—but she’s never been a warrior.”
    My lovers have always been warrior women.
    She wondered how many of those women had been as foolish as her—foolish enough to walk into his arms knowing that if push