"Have Maya remain where she is. I have people inside Nazarach's and Anoushka's homes."
"If it does prove to be Nazarach?"
"I'll execute him." Nazarach ruled Atlanta, but only under Raphael's grace. "Dahariel is the strongest of them all." And the most coldly intelligent. Leaving that decapitated head in Anoushka's bed was the kind of calculated threat Dahariel might make.
"If it is him," Jason said, "he's begun to strike close to home - one of Astaad's favorite concubines was found eviscerated yesterday. She was branded inside. All indications are that she was alive at the time."
"So . . ." It seemed nothing less than death - brutal, merciless - would satisfy this would-be archangel now. "Astaad hasn't informed the Cadre."
Jason didn't comment except to say, "Pride."
"Yes." The archangel who ruled the Pacific Isles had to be enraged that someone had managed to breach the walls of his harem. "One more archangel bested." In the most cowardly of ways, but drunk on vicious pleasure, the angel behind the assassination wouldn't see it that way. He, or she, would, Raphael was certain, view it as a true victory.
"Sire - there is more."
"Yes?"
"They found another Guild dagger in her chest cavity."
"Little hunter, little hunter, where aaaaaarre you?" Playful, singsong, horrifying.
Wrapping her arms around her raised knees, she ducked her head, making herself even smaller. The cupboard smelled of blood. Ari and Belle's blood. On her feet, in her hair, on her clothes.
Go away, she thought, please go away. Please, please, please, please . . . It was a litany in her head, her voice small and weak. Where was Daddy? Why didn't he come home?
And why wasn't Mama in the kitchen like she was every morning? Why was there a monster there?
"Where are you hiding, little hunter?" The creeping footsteps stopped for a second. An instant later came an even more chilling sound - lips smacking together. "Your sisters are most delicious. Do excuse me while I go take another bite."
She didn't believe him, terror and a frustrated, clawing rage keeping her locked in position. The giggle came three seconds later.
"Smart little hunter." A deep breath, as if he was drawing in the freshest of air.
Her own nostrils burned with the pungent aroma of a spice for which she had no name, mixed with ginger . . . and a golden, pure light. It nauseated her that this foul creature, this monster, smelled like summer days and a mother's warm embrace. He should smell like rot and pus. It was another affront, another pain to add to the ones he'd already carved across her heart.
Ari. Belle. Gone.
She blocked her sobs with a fist, knowing her sisters would never dance with her across the kitchen floor again. Belle's legs, those beautiful, long legs had been broken until they twisted in a way that was simply impossible. And Ari . . . the monster had nuzzled into the nightmare that was her neck before Elena found the courage to follow her sister's dying command to run. But the blood, the blood would give her away.
She waited, listened. He was moving around. She thought he might've gone upstairs, but her pulse was pounding too hard in her ears. She couldn't trust the sounds, couldn't run.
Not when he could be standing in the corridor waiting for her. Then it was too late. His footsteps came back into the room.
"I've got a suuuuurprise for you." A sly, scraping sound, the knob of the cupboard where she was hiding being twisted away. She pushed back into the wood but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to run.
"Boo!"A single perfect brown eye stared mischievously through the hole made by removing the knob. "There you are."
She stabbed out with the knitting needle she'd picked up from her mother's basket in the living room, spearing that eye dead center. Liquid spurted onto her hand, but she didn't care. It was his scream - high, piercing, agonized - that mattered. Giving a savage little smile, she pushed out of the cupboard as he stumbled back, darting past him and up the stairs.
She should have gone outside, found help. But she wanted her mom, needed to see that she was alive, was breathing. Shoving through her parents' bedroom door, she slammed it shut behind her, turned the lock. "Mama!"
There was no answer.
But when she looked around, relief poured through her. Because Mama was just sleeping. Running over on feet that continued to leave fading red imprints on the carpet, she shook her mother's shoulder.
And saw the gag around her mouth, the knives that pinned her wrists and ankles to the sheets. "Mama."Her lower lip quivered, but she was already reaching to undo the gag.
"I'll help you. I'll help you."
It was the terrified warning in her mother's eyes that made her turn.
"Bad little hunter." Shaking the bedroom key at her, the monster pulled the needle out, and looked at it with a single curious eye, the other a bloody ruin down his cheek. "Do you think Mommy would like a present?"
"Wake up, Elena! "
She jerked into a kneeling position in one go, reaching for the knife she'd slipped under the pillow out of habit. Raphael looked up at her as she stared down at him, knife held high, ready to go for his throat.
Red hazed her vision, her tendons quivering with the need to strike out.
Elena.The scent of the sea, of the wind.You're safe.
"I'll never be safe." It came out a withheld scream, so taut, so painful it was barely sound. "He hunts me in my dreams."
"Who?"
"You know." She tried to lower the knife. Her muscles refused.
"Say it. Make him real, not a phantom."