Remembering what that last vampire had said, Elena knew there was a high chance Caliane was behind this, but she kept her mouth shut. Much as it pained her to keep a secret from Ransom and the Guild, she’d agreed to be Raphael’s consort. He had her first loyalty. She wouldn’t betray that trust—
more, she wouldn’t share the shreds of information she had when nothing could be done about it.
“We need to ID the vampires,” she said, bending to strap the blade-bow to one thigh and the miniature flamethrower to the other, “notify the authorities.”
“I’l do the authorities,” Ransom said, pul ing out his cel . “They know I was on this track.”
“I know at least two of the vampires from sight,” Venom said, disappearing his blades into the crisscrossing black sheaths on his back that she could see now that he wasn’t wearing his jacket. “Give me a few minutes to see how many others I can ID.”
As Venom did that, Elena went around checking for wal ets where they hadn’t been fried by her flames or otherwise destroyed. She ended up finding seven pieces. Venom ID’ed four others from sight, which left them with five unknowns, most of them either charred beyond recognition or missing a face courtesy of Ransom’s gun.
“The angel in charge of this region is on his way with the authorities,” Ransom told them, closing his cel phone. “He’l take care of the rest of the IDs.
Looks like he’s going to need to break out the DNA kit for a few.”
Elena looked toward the hole in the roof where she’d entered the warehouse and found rain stil pouring in. “I think we al need a shower.”
The men didn’t say anything as they fol owed her out of the warehouse and into the torrential downpour. The water around them turned to rust, then a pale orange, then sepia, until final y, it ran clear. Blinking the rain from her eyes, she walked back to the door.
“El ie.” Ransom’s voice. “Our job is done. We just hold the scene until the cops arrive.”
Elena nodded. “I know, but I want to check their scents. This kind of a mass outbreak . . . for al we know, it could be a mutant virus.”
Of course both men fel into step beside her, though they’d already verified that every single one of the vampires was wel and truly dead. Vampires weren’t true immortals. They could be kil ed not only by other vampires and angels, but also by humans—beheading and fire were the best methods, though removal of the heart also worked if you then cut or, in Ransom’s case, blew off the head to make certain.
Leaving the two men to talk in quiet tones near the doorway, she went from body to body, searching, searching . . .
Dark, lyrical, lush.
There it was again, that haunting, intricate scent beneath the more brash smel s of the fal en vampires. She was almost certain she’d scented the same thing when the wind threatened to crash her into the Hudson . . . except something niggled at her, some “off” note she couldn’t quite identify. “Damn.” She knew for certain she’d be tracking down the essence of this particular black orchid as soon as she got back to the city.
Deep in the heart of Manhattan, Raphael snapped the neck of a bloodlust-ridden vampire after blazing through his mind to take what he needed to know. That information proved both sickening and . . . sad. Some would have said the Archangel of New York had no mercy in him, but he didn’t enjoy the waste of life. Most of these vampires had gone mad beyond any hope of recovery.
An insane vampire could not be al owed to continue to live, because driven by the urge to consume blood far beyond that which was necessary for life, that vampire would kil hundreds of innocents. “Under five decades old,” he said to Dmitri as the leader of his Seven came to stand beside him after dispatching his own prey. Around them, the city lay wrapped in a cloak of fear and danger, the lights in the high-rises fragile bulwarks against the dark that had fal en an hour earlier.
“Mine, too,” Dmitri replied, the edge of his long black coat lifting slightly in the breeze. “Venom just sent me a message—al the ones he recognized in Boston were young. No one over six decades old.”
“She is not yet conscious in truth, her strength weak,” Raphael said. “Yet she can do this.” Cause carnage on a scale unseen for centuries, turning formerly sane vampires into kil ing machines.
“Sire . . . Aodhan and Naasir, how close are they to finding her?”
Raphael looked up at the sliver of moon visible in the cloud-heavy sky. “My mother,” he said to one of the very few men he trusted, “was intel igent even in her final madness. She has not been found for over a thousand revolutions of the earth around the sun. Even if we do manage that, it wil be no easy task to contain her.” But he must attempt it.
For she lived because he had failed.
“Shh, my darling, shh.”