Nalini Singh: Angels' Pawn

“Damn.” Ashwini liked working on the edges, but when angels got involved, those edges tended to cut bone deep, drawing the dark red of lifeblood. “You got my back?”

“Always.” An unflinching response. “I’ve put Kenji and Baden on standby—give the signal and we’ll have you out of there in under an hour.”

“Thanks, Sara.”

“Hey, I don’t want to lose my main source of live entertainment.” A smile she could almost hear. “No new hunt order has come in for the Cajun. Just thought you’d want to know.”

“Uh-huh.” Ashwini hung up with a quick good-bye, wondering what Sara would say if she knew exactly who Ashwini was consorting with at the moment.

Janvier turned right at that instant—as if he’d sensed her attention. Shaking off the thought, she walked back to join vampire and angel. “Do you have any idea where Callan might be holding Monique?”

The angel’s eyes dipped to her lips, and she had to fight the urge to run. Because while Nazarach might be agonizingly beautiful, she had the gut-wrenching sense that his idea of pleasure would mean only the most excruciating pain for her.

“No,” he finally said, his gaze moving to her own. “But he’ll be at the Fisherman’s Daughter tomorrow night.” Amber lit with power. “Tonight, you will be my guest.”

Not even the Atlanta heat could fight the chill that invaded her veins, a cold blade of warning.

Sleepless, Ashwini sat on the balcony off the guest suite Nazarach had provided. She’d have preferred a tent in the park, a bed in a shelter, anything to the opulence of the angel’s home—all of it stained with a screaming terror that refused to let her sleep. “How many men and women do you think Nazarach’s killed over his lifetime?” Usually, she sensed things only through touch, but like its master, this place was so old, so bloody with memory, that it echoed endlessly in her mind.

“Thousands,” came the soft answer from the vampire leaning against the wall beside the antique lounge where she sat. “Angels who rule can’t afford to be merciful.”

She turned her face into the night breeze. “And yet some people see them as messengers of the gods.”

“They are who they are. As am I.” Turning, he walked over to brace his hands on the gleaming wooden arms of her lounge. “I must feed, cher .”

Something twisted in her chest, a sharp, unexpected ache, but she held it, held control. “I’m guessing you don’t have much trouble finding food.”

“I can give pleasure with my bite. There are those who seek such pleasures.” Lifting a finger, he traced the scar just above the pulse in her neck. “Who marked you?” A quiet question formed of pure ice.

“My first hunt. I was young, inexperienced. The vamp got close enough to almost rip out my throat.” What she didn’t say was that she’d let the target get that close, let herself feel the kiss of death. Until that moment—when her blood scented the air in an iron-rich perfume—she’d thought she wanted to die, to silence the voices forever. “He taught me to value life.”

“I will ask Nazarach’s indulgence,” Janvier said after an endless moment, “use the store of blood kept here for his vampires.”

Her senses honed in on something she’d barely seen, words unsaid. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“The angel wants me to leave you alone.” Janvier’s breath brushed over her in a intimate caress. “Otherwise that blood would’ve already been provided. He wants me to go out and hunt.”

Shivers threatened at the idea of what Nazarach wanted from her. “So you’ll anger him.”

“He likes me too much to kill me for such a small transgression.” Still, he didn’t move. “Why are there so many shadows in your eyes, Ashwini?”

It startled her each time he used her given name—as if every utterance bound them tighter on a level she couldn’t see. “Why are there so many secrets in yours?”

“I’ve lived over two hundred years,” he said, his voice as sensual as the magnolia-scented night. “I’ve done many things, not all of which I’m proud of.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.”

He didn’t smile, didn’t even breathe, still, so still. “Talk to me, my Blade.”

“No.” Not yet.

“I’m very patient.”

“We’ll see.” Even as she spoke, she knew she was laying down a challenge, one Janvier wouldn’t be able to resist.

He leaned in close enough that their lips could’ve touched, his breath a hot burn, his almost-immortality a living beacon in his eyes. “Yes. We will.”

Stepping into the shower, Ashwini turned it to freezing. “Yikes!” Her libido sufficiently dampened by the ice-cold shock, she switched it to superhot.

As her skin sizzled under the delicious heat, she supposed she should’ve been giving serious thought to the lunacy of what she was doing playing with a vampire, who was, for all his charm, as lethal as a stiletto across the throat. But then again, most of her friends already thought she was half a nut short of a fruitcake. Why disappoint?

She grinned against the pounding spray.

Rules and regs, the intricacies of living an “ordinary” life—she’d tried it for the first nineteen years of her existence, and had almost paid with not only her sanity, but her life itself.

A flash of memory and she was in that white-on-white room again, the straps biting into her arms, cutting into her flesh. The smell of disinfectant, the soft hush of rubber-soled shoes . . . and always, always —the screams, screams only she could hear. Later, them sitting there, judging her, as if they were gods.

“ The drugs keep her lucid. ”

“ Are you sure she’ll stay on them once we release her? ”

“ She’s going out on her brother’s recognizance. And Dr. Taj is, as we all know, a most well-regarded physician. ”

“ Ashwini, can you hear us? We need you to answer some questions. ”

She’d answered their questions, said what she knew they wanted to hear. It had been the last day she’d ever pretended to be “normal.” So they’d let her out, let her go. “Never again,” she whispered.

And the hell of it was, people still liked her.

Her hand fisted. Not everyone. Dr. Taj wanted only the sister he’d known before, the rising star whose glitter matched his own. Who the hell cared if that star had been dying piece by slow piece as she tried desperately to hang on to a sky she’d never quite understood?

It was the heat that wrenched her out of the abyss, as her skin began to protest its treatment. Flicking off the water with a grateful sigh, she rubbed herself down using the fluffy peach-colored towel that went with the elegant décor of the room. It would’ve been normal to head out into the bedroom in the matching robe hung on the back of the door, but Ashwini was a hunter. And, within the Guild, paranoia was not just accepted but encouraged.

It was as well. Because when she walked out—barefoot, but otherwise dressed, her gun hidden in the curve of her lower back—it was to find the most dangerous being in Atlanta waiting for her.

“Nazarach,” she said, stopping in the bathroom doorway. “This is a surprise.”

The angel stepped out onto the balcony. “Come.”

Sensing it would be suicidal to refuse, she followed him out into the summer air, the night heavy with the warm scents of the flowers that ringed the estate. “Janvier?”

“I know his tastes well.”

Ashwini’s hands clenched on the railing—a courtesy for guests, one she hadn’t expected. “Why am I here?” Why are you?

Nazarach leaned his elbows on the railing, his wings relaxed but no less magnificent. “I asked for you on this hunt. Do you know why?”