Guild Hunter 01 - Angels' Blood

came to shove, the archangel would end her life with a single, final thought. “It’s time for this warrior to earn her keep.”

Bloodlust
     
    He was sluggish, sated, the blood heavy in his gut.
    He’d overindulged, but what glorious overindulgence it had been.
    Dipping his fingers into the bowl of blood he’d saved from the cattle he’d butchered, he brought them to his mouth and licked.
    Flat. Lifeless.
    Disappointed, he smashed the bowl to the floor, spreading a dark red stain on the white carpet. But there was still the beauty above. He looked up, even as the dull heaviness in his limbs began to lighten, turning into a slow kind of anticipation.
    Now he knew—the blood had to be fresh.
    Next time, he’d take it straight from their beating hearts. His eyes grew red with violent hunger. Yes, next time, he wouldn’t kill . . . he’d keep.

27
     
    Elena wasn’t the least surprised when Michaela’s mansion turned out to be a place of beauty and grace. The archangel might be a two-faced bitch, but she hadn’t earned her reputation as the muse of artists across the ages by accident.
    “This was where we found the . . . gift,” the vampire guard told her, pointing to a patch of bloodstained grass.
    The bite of acid was sharp here despite the other vampire’s presence. Either Uram had mingled some of his own blood with the hearts, or he’d landed on the lawn itself. Talk about brazen . . . and creepy. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. “Can you move out of the immediate area?”
    He gave a short nod but didn’t take a step. “I was hunted once.”
    Elena looked up to where she could see Raphael and Michaela talking on a high balcony overlooking the lawn, and wondered if either angel would mind if she simply coldcocked the idiot at her side—she didn’t have time to deal with this kind of shit. “Can’t have been too bad if you’re still here.”
    “My mistress flayed the skin off my back and made it into a purse.”
    She wondered how well that info would go down with the faction who ascribed heavenly origins to the angels. “Yet you serve her even now.” It sounded like something the bitch goddess would do.
    The vampire smiled, showed teeth. “It was a very nice purse.” Then he finally walked away. She’d have to watch her back around that one, she thought. Whatever else Michaela had done to him over the centuries, he was no longer all there.
    “Immortality has way too many drawbacks,” she muttered, adding the possibility of becoming a purse to her mental list. Her eye fell on the bloody grass again. Kneeling, she confirmed the scent, then began walking out in ever-increasing circles.
    Uram’s scent blanketed the area. The archangel had most certainly touched down, standing there cloaked in glamour while Michaela’s guards remained clueless. Elena would’ve worried about running into him, but the scent, while pervasive, wasn’t as strong as it would’ve been had he been in the immediate vicinity. That made her wonder—were other archangels able to sense their brethren through the glamour?
    If not, no wonder Michaela was spooked.
    Unsurprisingly, the scent was particularly intense near the edge of the lawn. Looking up, Elena found herself with a direct line of sight into the bank of windows on the third floor. Michaela’s bedroom was smack in the middle.
    If this had been an ordinary hunt, Elena would’ve been grinning ear to ear by now. With this recent a trail, she could’ve run her prey to ground by sundown. But vampires didn’t fly. Still, she thought, eyes narrowed, now she knew Uram’s Achilles’ heel. His compulsion toward Michaela would constrict the breadth of his hunting grounds. She glanced up again, her mind pure, focused hunter. She needed the map of Michaela’s movements that Raphael had promised to get.
     
     
    Raphael was aware of Elena moving farther and farther away as she performed a methodical search. He kept his eye out for Riker, Michaela’s favorite guard. Riker did whatever Michaela told him to—it would make no difference to the vampire that Elena was under Raphael’s protection . . . though he probably should’ve killed her the second he recovered from the shooting. Because if Lijuan was right, then Elena was his fatal weakness.
    Death was a concept he hadn’t considered in centuries. But Elena had made him a little bit mortal. As she was. She’d die if Riker tore out her throat. And Michaela was capricious enough to have given such an