Jason didn’t answer. “I’ve had some news from Neha’s territory.”
The Archangel of India was powerful and, ever since the execution of her daughter, walking the edges of sanity. “Is it something we need to worry about?”
“No. It doesn’t seem connected to anything else.” He tracked a chopper coming in to land on a roof outside Tower territory. “An angel appears to have gone missing. A bare two years from the Refuge.”
Dmitri frowned. “She can’t know anything about it.” Angels that young were habitually put under the command of a senior vampire or angel.
“No. The vampire—Kallistos—who did have a care of the angel, says he assumed the young one went back to the Refuge.”
That wasn’t suspicious in and of itself. A senior vampire in an archangel’s court had a lot on his plate, and it wasn’t unusual for young angels to bolt to the security of the hidden angelic stronghold after their first taste of the wider world. “You’ve alerted the Refuge?”
“Aodhan and Galen are making inquiries,” the black-winged angel said, naming two of the Seven.
Dmitri nodded. Territorial borders aside, the young ones were always looked after. “I’ll speak to the other seconds in the Cadre, see if they can shed any light on the matter.”
“Angels do not just disappear.”
“No, but I’ve known the occasional youth to go a little wild after first leaving the Refuge.” Jason dealt mostly with the oldest of the angels, archangels included, but Dmitri continued to have contact with the younger angels because he liked to take a look at everyone coming into Raphael’s territory. “I once tracked a young male to a ‘party island’ in the Mediterranean.” He shook his head at the memory. “The boy was sitting there in a tree, watching the revelers—he’d never imagined that level of hedonism.”
“Such innocence.” Jason stepped to the very edge of the balcony. “Astaad,” he said, “there’s something there. Maya hasn’t been able to get any details but she’s working on it.”
Astaad was the Archangel of the Pacific Isles and one who did not appear to play political games. “I thought his behavior was connected to Caliane’s awakening.” There were always side effects when an archangel rose to consciousness, and Raphael’s mother was one of the most ancient of Ancients.
“It may be nothing, rumors begun by another source.” Eyes on the city, dazzling under the sunshine, he said, “You’re older than me, Dmitri.”
“Only by three hundred years.” A joke between two men who had lived longer than most could hope to imagine.
“I asked Elena what it was like to be mortal. She said time is precious in a way an immortal will simply never know.”
“She’s right.” Dmitri had been both, and if he could go back in time, destroy Isis before she ever came near him and his own, he would do so in a heartbeat, though it would mean he would die in a few short decades. “I felt more as a mortal than I have in the centuries since.”
“Will you love me when I’m fat and unwieldy with our babe?”
He put his hand on the curve of her belly, touched his lips to her eyelids, the tip of her nose, her lips. “I will love you even when I am dust on the wind.”
Honor watched Dmitri walk to stand beside the blackwinged angel and hissed out a breath at how close he was to the unprotected edge. Unlike the angel, he had no wings should he fall, and yet he stood there with a confidence that said he wasn’t the least worried about the eventuality.
A change in the air at her back.
Swiveling, she discovered the vampire with the wraparound shades in the doorway. “Dmitri’s outside.”
He headed through to the balcony without a word, just as the black-winged angel stepped off the edge. Those incredible wings disappeared for a moment before he rose up at dizzying speed. On any other day, she would’ve followed the trajectory of his flight, but today her attention was locked on Dmitri—whose face turned to granite after hearing whatever it was the other vampire had to say.
Stalking in, he said, “Leave that. We’re heading out.”
An arrogant command, but she read the tension in the air, made the connection. “Did you find the rest of the body?” Even as she spoke, she was removing the data card from the laptop in case she couldn’t immediately return to retrieve it.
“Yes.” Dmitri’s phone rang as they entered the elevator, but clearly the signal didn’t drop because he had a quick, curt conversation.
Meanwhile, the other vampire turned to look at her. He said nothing, and those mirrored sunglasses made it impossible for her to get a reading on him. Wanting to distract herself from the fact that she was trapped in a steel cage with two deadly predators, she said, “Sunglasses in the dark as a fashion statement went out with perms.”
He flashed his teeth—but not his fangs—at her. “You don’t want to see what’s behind the shades, sweetheart.” The last word was a mockery of an endearment that made every hair on her body rise in defensive warning.
“Venom.”
The vampire turned to face the front again, but the corners of his lips continued to tug up at the corners. “You want me to drive?”
“No, we’ll take the Ferrari. Take another car so I can leave you there.”
“I might make it faster on foot and it’ll give me a chance to observe the crowd without them being aware of it.”
“Go.”
Stepping out into the artificial light of an underground garage had never felt so good—she was fairly certain that without Dmitri to hold his leash, Venom would’ve shown her his fangs in more ways than one. “Now I know you’re important,” she said when the currently open-topped Ferrari proved to be parked in the spot nearest the elevator.
“If it took you this long, Honor, you’re dimmer than you look.”
As a taunt, it was only mildly irritating, especially when it was clear Dmitri wasn’t paying full attention. Sliding onto the butter-soft leather of the passenger seat, she looked over to where Venom had exited the garage. “What’s with the sunglasses?”
“You haven’t heard? He’s been in the city long enough to have come into contact with a number of hunters.”
“I didn’t work in the country much . . . before.” She took her first real breath in what felt like an hour as Dmitri drove them out of the secure Tower zone and into the music of Manhattan—complete with beeping horns, yelled-out insults, and a thousand cell phone conversations taking place at once. “Had no reason to interact with Tower personnel when I was in the city.”
“In that case”—an amused tone—“I’ll leave it to Venom to surprise you.”
The city picked up in volume the farther they got from the Tower. New York had overwhelmed her when she’d first arrived—fresh off a bus from North Dakota. This wasn’t home—no place was home, really—but at least the Guild was here. Ashwini and Sara lived here. So did Demarco, Ransom, and Vivek. Friends who had searched for her with relentless persistence, who would die for her if it came down to it. That was something. And it gave her an anchor when everything else was spiraling out of control. “Where did they find the body?”