“I’m so afraid,” Shae said when the birds scattered with a bright chorus, fine lines pinching out from her mouth, “that that’s what I’ll become as I age. Depraved, finding pleasure only in the humiliation and suffering of others.” A look of unhidden concern. “Even Dmitri . . . he’s barely on this side of the line, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” He was no innocent, would never be one. “Tell me more about Tommy.”
“He’s good with money so he has financial power, but is otherwise weak.” Fingers playing with the lapels of her robe, dropping to twist the ends of the belt at her waist. “They like to pretend to be big men, but they’re sheep, him and Evert both.”
“Yes.” Dmitri’s deep voice from behind Honor as he stepped out through the kitchen. “They were minor pawns in the scheme of things.”
For the first time since she’d met him, she didn’t angle her body to keep him in her line of sight. Instead, she allowed him to come up behind her, to place his hand on the back of the wooden chair where she sat, brush his thumb over the skin of her neck.
Terror, visceral and gut-deep. Her heart rabbiting against her ribs.
Gritting her teeth, she held her position, a small rebellion, a tiny reclaiming of who she’d been before the pit. “No screams,” she said, the words husky.
“I had my orders.” Continuing to play his thumb over her now fear-dampened skin, he spoke to the other vampire. “Evert won’t bother you again. Someone will be picking him up in about twenty minutes.”
Shae shuddered. “I—Will—” Her eyes landed on Honor, not Dmitri. “Will you stay? If he wakes up . . .”
“Yes,” she said, caught by the irony of Shae looking to safety from a woman who was currently fighting not to choke on the rancid taste of her own terror.
Dmitri tugged at a tiny curl of hair at her nape. “Look up, Honor.”
Illium was a stunning sight against the lightening sky, his wings sweeping through the air with a grace that made him seem a half-forgotten dream. When he landed in the courtyard, his wings flaring out for an instant, he was at once very much a man, physical and sexual, and an unattainable fantasy.
She could never see herself falling for such a beautiful man. No, it seemed her tastes ran darker, rougher, edgier. But she could admire him . . . and she could wonder about the shadows beyond the gold, shadows that resonated with something hidden inside of her. “Bluebell,” she said, remembering from Erotique. “Pretty name.”
“I call Dmitri Dark Overlord.”
“Shae,” Dmitri said and the female vampire rose at once to walk quickly into the house. “Now, pretty Bluebell”—another languid stroke across her skin—“tell the Overlord what you discovered.”
Grinning, Illium perched on the wooden table, one of his wings a bare inch from Honor. “I found this.” He passed over a textured cream-colored envelope. “It was on the nightstand, put there by the maid. Came tonight.”
Honor reached up to grab the envelope before Dmitri could, running her finger under the flap to unseal it. Inside was a single sheet of heavy paper with a very simple message.
The second hunt begins soon. I hope you will find this prey as delicious as the first—the Guild has the most appetizing personnel.
Honor put the letter on the table. Seeing its contents, Illium and Dmitri exchanged words, but their voices were drowned out by the crashing thunder inside her head. “No one else,” she whispered and it was a vow. “The bastards get no one else.”
Dmitri’s response was a simple “They won’t.” His hand curved around her nape . . . and she didn’t jerk away.
Ten minutes later, just after he’d finished speaking to one of his men in the vicinity of the Catskills, Dmitri got a call from Sorrow. “I think I did something, Dmitri.”
Long-dormant instincts struggled to wake at the fear-thinned sound of her voice. He crushed them—he couldn’t afford to think of the young woman the way he’d thought of Misha and Caterina. “Where are you?”
“The park near my house, by the big birdbath.” Shaken words, a spirit close to broken. “I’m sorry I sneaked out. I just wanted to go for a walk, that’s all.”
“Stay where you are,” he said, those old, buried instincts attempting to surface once again, harsh and ragged from centuries of disuse. “Illium’s going to fly to you—he won’t land,” he added, because he could feel her panic through the phone lines. And whatever else he might be, he wasn’t bastard enough to terrorize her in such a way. “I’ll be right behind him.”
Illium rose into the air as soon as Dmitri gave him the details. Dmitri then called Sorrow’s watch detail to tell them where to locate her. “Don’t approach.”
“Shae,” Honor said when he hung up. “She’s scared.”
He saw compassion in those midnight-forest eyes, was rocked by her ability to feel the tender emotion. But he wasn’t like her—everything good in him had burned as his son’s tiny body burned in the ruins of the cottage he’d built for his bride. So fast Misha had disappeared, so impossibly fast. The crackle of the flames, the whistle of the wind, none of it had drowned out the echo of the last words his son had ever spoken to him.
“Don’t let go, Papa.”
“Good,” he said, shoving the memories back in the steel box that could no longer contain them, “fear will keep her from being stupid.” Striding through to the living area where Shae hovered, he grabbed her chin. “Say a word about what you learned here tonight, and you’ll be joining Evert as Andreas’s guest.”