Hanging up, Dmitri turned to Honor. “Are you armed?”
“Always.”
Punching up the speed, he raced out of New Jersey and toward Philadelphia. More instructions came in as he drove, and it was seven hours later, the sky beginning to darken with the first faint streaks of the time between sunset and true night, that he found himself back in Manhattan. Mouth grim, he picked up the call as it came in.
“Have fun on your little drive?” Kallistos laughed, and it was the sound of metal grating.
Dmitri maintained his silence, guessing Kallistos would believe him to be in the grip of a rage that would disallow rational thinking. It didn’t. Dmitri’s hatred for Isis didn’t blind him—not now, not after he’d bathed in her blood.
“I left you a present.” Kallistos was almost giggling. “In one of the New York properties you own.” The other vampire hung up.
Telling Honor what Kallistos had said, he did an illegal U-turn and headed out toward Englewood Cliffs. Sire, he said, able to speak to Raphael since the archangel was directly overhead. If you and Illium will take these three—he relayed the addresses—I’ll take care of the fourth. He sent through the final address as well.
“We’re taking the closest property,” he said to Honor. “Raphael and Illium will reach the other locations much faster.” Kallistos, he thought, was long gone.
“What are the chances this might be the spot?”
He considered the high fences, the lane in the back that could be used to sneak onto the property. “It’s relatively private, and decaying enough to suit Kallistos’s sense of theater, from what we’ve seen so far.” Increasing his speed, he blew past startled motorists.
If it had been an older angel at risk, Dmitri wouldn’t have felt the overriding alarm he did now, but the one who’d been taken was young, his immortality not yet set in stone. Of course, most mortals or vampires would still be unable to cause him a fatal injury, but Kallistos was older than Dmitri; he had both the strength and the knowledge to murder an angel so vulnerable.
34
“We’re here.” Dark hair whipped off Dmitri’s forehead as he took them down a somewhat derelict street, before turning in through a pair of open gates that led to a decaying apartment complex.
“I’m guessing the value is in the land?”
“Millions.” Bringing the car to a halt behind the protective barrier of a pile of rubble, Dmitri got out and opened the trunk to retrieve a stunning blade too big to be covertly carried. No, this weapon was about power and intimidation.
It was, if she wasn’t mistaken, a scimitar. However, she didn’t get much of a good look at it before he was striding back, the weapon held to his side, his eyes flat with lethal intent. “Stay at my back, Honor. Kallistos is most likely gone, but we can’t assume that.”
“I’ll cover you,” she said, not arguing with the order because she knew about confronting your own monsters, and Kallistos was Dmitri’s.
“No, stay literally at my back. A gunshot won’t do me any significant damage, but could kill you.”
The idea of Dmitri bleeding for her made Honor’s hand clench brutally on the butt of her gun, but again, she kept her silence, knowing time was of the essence. “Let’s go.”
He was a sleek shadow in front of her, one who ensured she was never exposed to anyone who might be watching them from the building. Honor didn’t breathe until they’d traversed the open section to reach the door. He went in first, while she kept her eyes forward as she backed in behind him, gun pointed outward.
The only thing that met them inside was silence . . . and a broken angel. The boy—and yes, he was a boy still, his deathly pale face holding the fading softness of childhood—had been dumped on his front in the dusty lobby, his pale brown wings streaked with blood and dirt as they lay limp and crumpled on either side of him.
Wrong, there was something wrong with those wings.
Broken.
It was, she realized, feeling sick to her stomach, the only way to transport an unconscious angel if you didn’t want to use a huge truck and draw unwelcome attention.
“Honor.”
“I’ve got you covered.”
Crouching down, Dmitri touched his fingers to the angel’s cheek.
“He’s warm.” Putting down the scimitar, he used utmost care to turn the body, making sure not to further damage the boy’s wings. “No heartbeat.” But that didn’t mean all hope was lost. Raphael, how close are you? he asked, having felt the archangel’s mind touch his as he turned in through the gates.
Minutes away. Show me.
Dmitri opened his mind enough that Raphael was able to see through his eyes, assess the damage. Give him your breath, Dmitri. He will not survive otherwise.
Trusting Honor to maintain the guard, Dmitri began to breathe for the young angel, feeling that chest, heavy with the muscle necessary for flight, rise and fall under his touch. It wasn’t more than five minutes later that Raphael walked into the building. The archangel didn’t hesitate in kneeling on the dirty floor, his wings trailing in the accumulated dust and debris, to take the boy into his arms—replacing Dmitri’s lips with his own.
An archangel’s breath held incredible power.
As Dmitri watched, a faint blue glow suffused the place where Raphael’s lips met the young angel’s.
Rising, he picked up the scimitar and turned to glance at Honor, a hard-eyed hunter with a gun in her hands she wouldn’t hesitate to use to protect the vulnerable—yet one who had the heart to feel pity for what her abuser had suffered as a child. Dmitri had no such softness inside him, but he accepted that it was an integral part of Honor, this complex woman with ancient knowledge in those eyes of midnight green.