Guild Hunter 02 - Angels' Flight

Hunter.”
     
    “I’ll be holding a crossbow next time.” It was a certainty, given Janvier’s penchant for pissing off high-level angels.
     
    A slow, so slow smile. “You might be my perfect woman.”
     
    “If I am, you’re in serious trouble.” She stepped back, and up into the train carriage, on the heels of the final warning tone. “I don’t date vampires.”
     
    “Who said anything about dating?” He gave her that wicked smile he seemed to save just for her. “I’m talking blood and sex and hunting.”
     
    As the train pulled away, Ashwini knew she was in trouble. Because Janvier didn’t know her; he
knew
her. “Blood and sex and hunting.” It was one hell of a tempting proposition.
     
    Fishing out her phone, she called the Guild Director. “Sara, I’ve changed my mind.”
     
    “On?”
     
    “The Cajun.”
     
    “You sure?” Sara asked. “Last time you hunted him, you told me to keep you away from him or you’d end up in solitary confinement after throwing him into a lava pit.”
     
    “Solitary confinement might be good for me.”
     
    A pause. “Ash, you do realize you live in the Twilight Zone?”
     
    The affection in the comment made her grin. “Normal is overrated. Just make sure I get any hunts where he’s involved.”
     
    “You got it.” The Guild Director blew out a breath. “But I have to ask one thing.”
     
    “Yeah?”
     
    “Are you two
flirting
?”
     
    Ashwini felt her lips curve. “If he’s not gator-bait by the next hunt… possibly.”
     

Angels’
Judgment

Cadre of Ten
     
    T he Cadre of Ten, the archangels who ruled the world in all the ways that mattered, met in an ancient keep deep in the Scottish Highlands. No one—human or vampire—would dare trespass on angelic territory, but even had they felt the need to give in to the suicidal urge, it would have proved impossible. The keep had been built by angels, wings a prerequisite for access.
    Technology could’ve negated that advantage, but immortals didn’t survive eons by being left behind. The air above and around the keep was strictly controlled, both by a complex intrusion detection system and by units of highly trained angels. Today’s security had turned the sky into a cascade of wings—it wasn’t often that the ten most powerful beings in the world met in one place.
     
    “Where is Uram?” Raphael asked, glancing at the incomplete semicircle of chairs.
     
    Michaela was the one who answered. “He had a situation in his territory that required immediate attention.” Her lips curved as she spoke, and she was beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful woman who had ever lived . . . if you didn’t look beneath the surface.
     
    “She makes Uram her puppet.” It was a murmur so low that Raphael knew it had been meant for him alone.
     
    Glancing at Lijuan, he shook his head. “He’s too powerful. She might control his cock, but nothing else.”
     
    Lijuan smiled, and it was a smile that held nothing of humanity. The oldest of the archangels had long passed the age where she could even pretend at being mortal. Now, when Raphaellooked at her, he saw only a strange darkness, a whisper of worlds beyond either mortal or immortal ken.
     
    “And are we not important?” A pointed question from Neha, the archangel who ruled India and its surrounds.
     
    “Leave it, Neha,” Elijah said in that calm way of his. “We all know of Uram’s arrogance. If he chooses not to be here, then he forfeits the right to question our decisions.”
     
    That soothed the Queen of Poisons. Astaad and Titus seemed not to care either way, but Charisemnon wasn’t so easily appeased. “He spits on the Cadre,” the archangel said, his aristocratic face drawn in sharply angry lines. “He may as well renounce his membership.”
     
    “Don’t be stupid, Chari,” Michaela said, and the way she did it, the tone, made it clear she’d once had him in her bed. “An archangel doesn’t get invited to join the Cadre. We become Cadre when we become archangels.”
     
    “She’s right.” Favashi spoke for the first time. The quietest of the archangels, she held sway over Persia, and was so good at remaining unnoticed that her enemies forgot about her. Which was why she ruled as they lay in their graves.
     
    “Enough,” Raphael said. “We’re here for a reason. Let’s get to it so we can return to our respective territories.”
     
    “Where is the mortal?” Neha asked.
     
    “Waiting outside.