Even if he isn’t there now, he’ll return to his lair sooner or later.
Breaking the mental contact, he relayed Illium’s words to Honor. She nodded, the gun she’d chosen as her main weapon held to her side. He preferred the blade. The scimitar he carried was an old favorite, and it often sat on display in Raphael’s home at the Refuge—but the last time he’d been at the angelic stronghold, Dmitri had felt driven to take it down, bring it to New York.
“The runes on your blade,” Honor asked as they continued to walk through the thick quiet of the woods, the rustling of the leaves the only sound. “What do they mean?”
“You should know,” he said with a provocative smile. “It was another witch who put them on the blade for me, after all.”
A green-eyed glance as sharp as the gleaming edge on his scimitar. “Careful, or I might decide to turn you into a toad.”
Hell with it.
Gripping the back of her neck, he brought her to him for the kiss he’d been wanting to claim for hours. A long dark tangling of tongues, he indulged in her until she shuddered, her lips ripe and swollen. “After this is over,” she said, touching her fingers to her kiss-wet mouth, “I think I want to spend a month locked in a bedroom with you.”
His lips curved. “That could be arranged.” The bedroom games he wanted to play with Honor were beyond decadent, beyond sinful. “The house should be coming up soon.”
“There,” Honor whispered a bare two minutes later.
Hidden in the midst of what felt like thousands of sugar maple trees shivering in the whispering night wind, the house sat private and cocooned from the outside world. Though they’d come out behind it, Honor had no doubt what she was seeing accurately reflected the overall architecture. Despite the serene setting, it was no fairy tale, no elegant retreat. It reminded Honor of nothing so much as a hulking beast, a monument to gothic excess.
Two snarling gargoyles guarded the back steps, their fangs bared and claws unsheathed. From what she could make out in the dark, that was simply the beginning—she was fairly certain more gargoyles peered out from the roof, including a giant batlike creature silhouetted against the pitch-black sky.
The ivy that covered most of the building added to the impression of decaying menace, as did the spread of leaves deep on the ground. As if decades’ worth of forest debris had collected on top of each other, until now, the ground was forever lost. Walking across the leaves—soft this time of year, concealing rather than betraying their passage—Honor kept her gun in hand as Dmitri’s blade cut a dark wound through the night, his stride as confident and quiet as a hunting cat’s.
She touched his arm when they reached the bottom of steps that led onto a narrow porch, pointed. “Look.”
No ivy or moss covered the central part of the stone steps. As if they had been used recently and often. When she bent down and cautiously flicked on her flashlight, shielding the beam with her palm, she was able to glean a faint path in amongst the organic matter that covered what may once have been a manicured lawn. A single nod to Dmitri, before she flicked off the flashlight and they headed slowly and silently up the steps and to the back door of the monstrosity of a house.
Dmitri angled his head.
It was strange—in a wonderful kind of way—how perfectly she understood him. Bending, she duckwalked to the nearest window. She could see nothing beyond, but she kept going, checking window after window.
The only thing that lay beyond was a stygian darkness. Since the house was enormous, that meant nothing, but she turned and straightened up enough to shake her head at Dmitri before moving past him to check the other side, while he kept watch, a silent, dangerous predator almost indistinguishable from the night. It was at the third window that she saw it.
35
Heading back to Dmitri, she whispered the results in his ear, his scent familiar, welcome. “Light appeared a second ago. Flickering, as if from a candle.” The glow of it had been diffuse in a way no electric lamp could mimic. “Deep inside the house.”
Dmitri raised his hand . . . toward one of the gargoyles on the roof.
Wings unfurled and Illium flew in silence toward the front, ready to block any attempt at escape.
“Could be a diversion,” she said, heart pounding from the rush of adrenaline caused by the unexpected sight. “Kallistos might be waiting behind the door.”
Dmitri shook his head. “I smell nothing to indicate that, and my senses are acute.” Reaching out, he twisted the doorknob with care. When it opened under his hand, he said, “A trap then.” His lips held a faint smile. “Don’t get hurt, Honor, or you’ll be waking up with fangs.”
She froze. “I haven’t been tested.” All short-listed Candidates were tested for something during the acceptance process. Theories as to what ranged the gamut, but the tests themselves were compulsory.