“There was a reason—Shabnam was Neha’s favorite.”
Mahiya lifted a trembling hand to her mouth. “Akin to a child destroying a sibling’s favorite toy out of jealousy or spite.”
A scream ripped through the fort on the heels of her horrified words.
* * *
No angelic or vampiric body awaited them this time, but there was carnage nonetheless. Thrown across what seemed like every inch of the public audience hall were the limp, mangled bodies of at least twenty of Neha’s pet snakes, the columns that held up the structure splattered with blood.
“This took time.” Mahiya knelt down beside the thick body of a tree boa whose dry leathery skin continued to gleam a dramatic green. “The snakes aren’t tame as such—they come only to Neha’s hand. Tracking and patience, this required both.”
Hearing the sadness in her tone, Jason met her gaze in wordless question.
“After Guardian,” she said with a tight smile, “I can’t avoid the fear that curdles my stomach at the sight of Neha’s creatures, but I will not allow that fear to rule me.” Grim determination. “I try to remember what I’ve always known—that left alone, these creatures would avoid me as I’d avoid them. They did not deserve to be slaughtered.”
A wash of wind, Neha coming to land behind them, the anger on her face shot through with grief. Not saying a word, she stepped to the edge of the audience hall and simply looked, as if taking note of every single snake that had been butchered. And they had been. The boa Mahiya had been crouching beside appeared an exception, but closer examination showed it to be only half of the snake.
After being hacked into pieces, the reptiles had been flung around the audience hall. Such a thing would be impossible to do in daylight, but this particular area would’ve been all but deserted in the darkest part of night—the early discovery had occurred because of a lover’s spat that had sent a male vampire aimlessly wandering the fort.
“Do their bodies tell you anything?” Neha asked with frigid politeness.
Jason shook his head. “Only that the blade used was most probably a butcher’s cleaver.” A simple, sharp cut. “Is there any pattern to the ones who were harmed?”
Neha’s gaze lingered on several of the mutilated snakes. “They were the most docile—older pets who had become used enough to humans that they wouldn’t have slithered away at being approached.” Her wings held neatly off the blood-streaked floor, she said, “I must care for them.” Reaching back, she took a woven basket from the lady-in-waiting who’d arrived with her.
Not saying a word, Mahiya took a second basket and helped Neha gather up the remains. The silence was acute, Neha’s anger a pulse he could almost sense against his skin. But that wasn’t what Jason listened for, what he watched for. Because he was almost certain that out there in the shadows, within sight of the audience hall, stood someone who laughed at Neha’s distress.
However, not even his eyes, with their extraordinary night vision, could penetrate the thick clouds of black that coalesced inside the arches and doorways he could see from this vantage point. Starting a search for the watcher would be pointless. He or she had the advantage of having planned an escape route, would be long gone by the time Jason reached their hiding place.
Instead, he stood guard, never losing sight of where Mahiya was at any moment, regardless of his focus on the shadows.
“Come.” Neha said nothing else as she took flight, basket in hand.
Mahiya rose after her, and Jason followed, rising above them both in order to keep watch. However, Neha didn’t go far, landing on a small mountain plateau perhaps five minutes later. In the center of the open space stood a flat gray stone set atop a number of other stones shaped to brick smoothness and slotted in to create a squat pyramid.
Placing both baskets on the flat stone, Neha bent down and whispered something so soft, the wind buffeted her words away before they reached Jason. The first tendril of smoke appeared from below the baskets a second later.
By the time Neha stepped away from the little pyre, flames licked out of the baskets, and he understood the archangel had gained power not just over ice, but over fire. Ice could harm, but fire . . . fire was annihilation and violence on a level beyond. And Neha could now drop the flickering yellow orange death from the sky.
32
Dmitri ensured Honor was comfortable in the four-poster bed she’d made up with sheets of crisp white speckled with tiny blue forget-me-nots. Returning to the country with as much stealth as possible, they’d headed immediately to the house Jason had told Dmitri of on his and Honor’s wedding day. The instant Dmitri saw the place, he understood why Jason had been so certain no one would ever come upon them unawares.
It was a fortress created by nature itself.
The mountain had no roads—he and Honor had hiked in up the highly specific path Jason had shared. Any deviation from that path would’ve sent them to impassable cliffs, dangerous rock faces loose with gravel, hidden traps. Built of stone and wood, the house was a part of the environment, while up above was a dark green canopy that let in stray beams of sunlight while concealing the house from aerial view.
Added to that was a sophisticated security system that would alert Dmitri to anyone in the forest or in the sky.
It was the safe place Jason had promised, a place where Dmitri’s wife embraced her new existence as a near immortal. The toxin that would turn her into a vampire had been introduced into her system three hours earlier, with Raphael having left New York under cover of night to fly here to perform the task—a task the archangel would do twice more several weeks apart.