Guild Hunter 04 - Archangel's Blade

wondered if he’d missed the far more sinister truth. “No longer as certain as I once was.” He closed the lid.
    “We’ll call Santiago, get the cops involved.” Everyone would assume Amos had gone insane with age. That facet of a long life was an unhidden truth, one that stopped none of those who wanted to be Made. Even two hundred years spent as a healthy, ageless vampire was a lot longer than the average human life span. “The more people we have watching for him, the better the chances of running him down.”
    Honor nodded, taking small, shallow breaths until they were back out in the corridor with the door closed. “Why did he take me? I don’t fit the profile.”
    Cold rage pulsed through Dmitri’s blood at the reminder of what Amos had done to Honor, but he gave the question serious thought. “He hates his mother, it seems, but he also wishes to please her.” A flicker of memory, Jiana at a cocktail party she’d given four summers ago.
    “Dmitri, I’m so glad you could come.” A gracious smile, a kiss on his cheek. “Have you met Rebecca?” This time, the smile on her lips held an elegant sensuality.
    “A pleasure,” he said, inclining his head toward the curvy brunette beauty with skin of light golden brown who hung on Jiana’s every word.
    “You,” he said to Honor, “are not his type, but you are Jiana’s.”
    “That’s sick . . . and put together with everything else, it raises certain questions.” She glanced at the closed door to the room that spoke of Amos’s twisted sexuality. “Let’s head outside, call Santiago.”
    Dmitri let her lead them out through the back door. The sunshine was brilliant, the heat of it a slicing blade. As he watched, Honor strode down to the grass and used her cell to call the cop who had a way of ending up on cases linked to immortals. While she did that, he made a few calls of his own, including one to a senior vampire under his command. “Make certain Jiana doesn’t leave the house,” he ordered. “I need to have a chat with her.” Hanging up, he waited for Honor to walk back to him.
    She halted a foot away. He closed that distance to take her into his arms, careful not to imprison her, but she didn’t freeze up at the contact. Instead, she sank into the embrace, her own arms tight around him. They stood there in silence for long sun-soaked minutes, Honor’s pulse a steady, thudding beat against his vampiric senses.
    The last time Dmitri had stood thus, simply holding a woman because it felt right, he’d been mortal. “My wife,” he said, speaking words he’d spoken to no other, “loved the sunshine. She would come out into the fields with me, and while I worked them, she’d”— rock our baby boy —“work on the mending. I was always tearing my shirts.”
    Honor’s laugh was soft, her voice gentle as she said, “A wonderful wife.”
    “She was,” he continued, knowing that though the man Ingrede had loved had been as different from him as night from day, he’d never stop mourning the loss of her smile, “but she also used to drive me mad at times. I’d tell her I’d fix something in the cottage when I got home, and by the time I’d return from the fields, she’d have done it and have the bruises to prove it.” His heart had almost stopped the day he’d found her on the roof. “And she couldn’t cook.”
    Honor looked up, eyes sparkling. “Did you ever say so to her?”
    “You must have a low estimation of my intelligence.” He bent until their foreheads touched. “She pretended to love to cook and I pretended to adore her cooking, and we both lived for the village festivals when we could buy from the stalls.”
    Honor’s laughter was a deep, husky sound, twining into his very blood. And for a moment, he was . . . happy, in a way he hadn’t been happy since the day the cottage turned to ash, taking his heart with it. “Witch, you are,” he said, dipping his head to claim her lips in a kiss that held both the sweetness of the sunshine—and a good dose of raw sex. “In my bed, Honor. That’s where I want you.”
    Lips wet from his caress, she cupped his face. “I think”—a soft murmur—“that’s where I want to be.”
     
     
    It was full dark by the time they arrived back at the Tower. Venom was waiting for them. “This came through the mail today.” He handed over an envelope.
    It proved to contain a note written in the same code as the tattoo that had originally brought Honor to the