“Can you not guess, Elena?”
It wasn"t hard, not when she thought back to what she knew about Uram. “Your father thought angels should be worshipped as gods,” she said slowly. “That mortals and vampires should bow down before you.”
“Yes.”
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There was a knock on the balcony doors before she could formulate a reply. Glancing over, she saw only darkness. “Is it Jason?”
“Yes,” Raphael said, rising off the bed, his expression grim. “And Naasir awaits below.”
She watched him step out onto the balcony, and though she knew Jason was there, she still couldn"t make out anything of the black-winged angel"s form.
Elena, get dressed.
Caught by the urgency of the command, she got out of bed and pulled on a pair of cotton panties, ignoring the bruises that had already begun to turn a nice putrid purple on her back and thighs. Over the panties, she donned a pair of black pants made of some kind of tough, leatherlike material, and—after shedding the shirt—a top that wrapped around her in a complicated pattern of straps, but ended up covering her chest while leaving her arms and most of her back bare. The fit was snug, leaving her free to move without worrying about extraneous material getting in her way.
Having felt the approaching cold front, she slipped on long, tight sleeves that fit securely just below her shoulders—they"d provide warmth while ensuring her arms remained unrestricted. As she grabbed her boots, she arrowed her thoughts to Raphael, aware he was no longer on the balcony. Where?
Dmitri will escort you.
The vampire was waiting for her in the hallway, and for once, there was no hint of sex about him—unless you liked your sex lethal. Wearing black leather pants, a black T-shirt that hugged his leanly muscled frame, and a long black coat that swept around his ankles, he was death honed to a gleaming edge. Straps crisscrossed his chest and she recognized them as a dual holster.
“Weapons?” he asked.
“Gun and knives.” The knives sat on either side of her thighs, but the gun she"d tucked into her boot after debating whether to put it in the curve of her lower back and deciding she wasn"t yet confident enough in terms of getting her wings out of the way fast enough.
“Let"s go.” Dmitri was already walking.
The sky was a brilliant, exotic black when they exited, the stars so clear it felt as if she could reach out and touch them. The first snow to hit the Refuge glittered underfoot, having fallen with stealthy silence in the interval since she"d gone inside.
“How bad are your injuries?” A cool glance, his eyes assessing her as nothing but another tool.
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“I"m functional,” she said, knowing she could work through the muscle stiffness, the dull ache in her chest. “Nothing"s broken.”
“You may need to track.”
“That part of me never stopped working. As you know very well.”
“Wouldn"t want you to get out of practice.” Casual words, but his eyes were those of a predator on the hunt, his strides eating up the ground as they walked toward a section of the Refuge that seemed made up of midsized family dwellings.
Lights blazed in every window they passed, but the world was eerily hushed.
“Here.” Dmitri headed down a narrow pathway lit with lamps that appeared as if they"d been transported from mid-nineteenth-century England. Mind swirling with possibilities, she kept her eyes firmly on the path as it twisted this way and that, leading finally to a small home on the very edge of a cliff.
A perfect location.
The cliff would provide for easy takeoffs, and there was plenty of space in front when it came to landings. But, given the terrain, there appeared to be only one way out for those on foot—the path they"d just traversed. A stupidly easy trail. So why would Raphael need a scent-tracker?
Elena.
Following Raphael"s mental voice, she headed to the house . . . to the smell of iron turning to rust. Her body froze on the doorstep, her foot refusing to step over the threshold.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
“Come here, little hunter. Taste.”
It was a shock of memory, shoving her into the past with such brutal swiftness that she couldn"t fight the descent.
Belle, still alive when she walked in. But only for a fragment of a moment, her eyes filming over with death even as Elena reached out—
Waves of scent, the most decadent chocolate and champagne, promises of pleasure and pain.
Arousal uncurled, and it was so wrong for this moment that it snapped the loop of nightmare.
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Taking a shallow breath, she stepped over the threshold, forcing herself to walk into another home stained with the kiss of malice.
Dmitri"s scent began to fade almost immediately and at rapid speed. He was leaving, she realized, aware she couldn"t track effectively with his intense scent bleeding into the air. But he"d remained long enough to give her that mental slap when she hesitated on the doorstep.