“I got an invitation,” the vampire said at once, dribbling blood. “It’s in my study at home. On the desk.” She reached up to wipe away the blood trickling from her nose, smearing dark red across the porcelain of her skin. “Tommy was one of them. He insinuated something at a party and I had him followed. Stupid man never took precautions.”
Which was why, Honor thought, Tommy’s invitation had been permanently retracted. “You aren’t giving us anything we don’t already have.”
The vampire’s eyes snapped to her. “Shut up, mortal.”
Walking back to lean against the hood, Dmitri glanced at Honor. “Can’t I touch her a little?” His smile when he looked at Jewel was pure sex—if you liked your sex with a great deal of pain . . . if you liked to scream until your throat was raw. “Your skin, Jewel, so very soft,” he murmured, and while there was nothing overtly threatening about his words, if he’d been speaking to Honor in that tone, she’d have pumped him full of bullets and run like hell.
And then he took out the knife.
Jewel shoved herself back against the tree, began babbling. “Evert had to know. He and Tommy do everything together, but they weren’t part of the center. The one who organized this, he made very sure to keep his identity contained, but there’s a rumor in certain circles that he once worked at the Tower. How else would he know about the appetites of so many?”
“Certain circles,” Honor said, putting her hand on Dmitri’s shoulder, a silent reminder that Jewel wasn’t worth even a fragment of his soul. “Who?”
A single smile from Dmitri and the vampire gave up three names.
Fifteen more minutes of questioning later, it was clear she knew nothing else. While Dmitri hadn’t laid another finger on her, she was so petrified, her teeth were chattering, her eyes darting this way and that.
For an instant, Honor felt pity. “Enough, Dmitri.”
Moving with preternatural speed, he snapped Jewel’s neck before the vampire even had the chance to draw in a breath to scream. “She’s not dead,” he said after it was done. “At this level of strength, she’ll rise again unless I decapitate her. Venom can fly her to Andreas in the chopper.”
Shocked at the brutal swiftness of the punishment, she said, “I thought it would make me feel better, the idea of her being tortured, but it doesn’t.”
“There can be no mercy here.” The words of a man who had seen centuries pass, rivers of blood soak the earth. “The instant word gets out that we’re doing clean executions, the Made will lose the fear that ensures they don’t dare things such as this more often.” He sent a message to Venom as he spoke. “For the old ones, death is no threat. But pain . . . everyone fears pain.”
She understood what he was saying, certainly had no loyalty to Jewel, and yet—“It seems so . . .”
“Inhuman?” A grim smile. “We aren’t mortals, Honor. We never will be.”
She wondered if he was giving her a warning. If so, it was unnecessary. “I’ve always seen you, Dmitri.” No matter if she believed there was more to him, this vein of darkness was also an integral part of his nature, couldn’t be ignored or wished away.
Chopper blades sounded at that instant, and soon Venom was landing the machine. The vampire whistled when he saw the carnage, but said nothing, picking up Jewel Wan’s body and stowing it with all the care you might show to a sack of potatoes. “You want a ride?”
“No, we’ll drive.”
Venom slanted Honor an assessing look, but said nothing as he got into the helicopter and lifted off in a wild rush of air.
Leaving the abandoned Town Cars where they were, she and Dmitri got back into the rental. A couple of calls later, and Dmitri had organized a cleanup crew both for the cars and for the guards.
“What will happen to them?” she asked.
“Nothing to the two who didn’t lift a weapon against me as long as they prove to have had no knowledge of Jewel’s actions. The other one will suffer a punishment.” His eyes met hers for a second. “By disobeying me, he disobeyed Raphael. That can’t be permitted.”
The instant it was, Honor knew, many of the Made would break their bonds, surrender to bloodlust, begin to hunt living prey. “The three names she gave, do you know them?”
“Yes. They’re part of the same social circle as Jewel and the others.”
“She’s enough of a bitch that she might have snuck in a name that doesn’t belong, out of spite.”
“We’ll find out soon enough—I’ve sent instructions that they’re to be watched. They’ll be brought to the Tower for questioning tomorrow morning.”
Releasing a long breath, she said, “I just want to finish this.” Wanted to get on with the life she’d decided to live.
“You will.”
Sitting in the passenger seat with Dmitri tangling her in fur and chocolate and sin, luscious and irresistible, Honor watched the miles pass by, the motion soothing, lulling her into sleep . . . into dreams.
“You are my wife.”
“And you are a jealous man.” Shoving her hands into her hair she blew out a breath. “If anyone has cause to be jealous, it’s me.”
“You know I would never touch another woman.”
“And you think I would touch another man?”
Silence, his face harsh with shadows. “Other men covet you.”
Shaking her head, she reached out to lay her palm against his stubbled jaw. “I’m no great beauty.”
His fingers closed over her wrist, his other hand coming to lie at her waist. “You don’t see it, but I’m a man. I do.”
Sometimes she wondered what she was doing with him, this beautiful creature every woman in the village watched with admiring eyes. It was as if they knew how he moved when inside a woman, how he could play a woman’s body until she would do anything he desired. Except she knew they didn’t. For he had waited for her, though his body had to have demanded satisfaction, offers no doubt coming his way from women who did not honor their husbands.
“You are my heart,” she said, taking his hand and placing it over the beating organ. “It doesn’t matter if another man should give me a thousand promises, it’s to you that I belong.”
“Always?”
“Always.”
“Honor.”
Ignoring the masculine voice that tried to pull her into the waking world, she fought desperately to hold on to the dream—because the woman she was in that hazy place, she was loved, loved so deeply that it was a little terrifying.
“Honor.” A caress of orchids and gold, decadent, luxuriant, enticing.
She jerked upright in her seat to find that they were driving into the parking garage beneath her building. “I fell asleep.” In a car. With a man. With a vampire.
“You were smiling.”
“Just a dream.” One so vivid she could almost feel the stubble of her dream lover’s jaw on her palm. “Do you dream?”
Reaching across after parking the SUV, he stroked a finger over her cheek, where she could feel lines caused by sleep. “In sleep, I remember memories, times long past.”
She caught his hand against her cheek, had a disorienting sense of déjà vu. “Good memories?” she asked, the feeling shimmering out of existence as quickly as it had awakened.
Thick black lashes coming down, rising again. “There are times when even good memories aren’t welcome.” Remote words, but he didn’t break her hold.
Lights cut across the garage behind them an instant later, destroying the intimacy of the moment . . . and yet neither of them moved. “Come upstairs.” It wasn’t an invitation she would have even considered making a bare few weeks ago. But she’d been another woman then.
Dmitri rubbed his thumb across her chin before dropping his hand, but she didn’t need words to read the dark heat in his expression, his lips suddenly softer, erotically tempting. Pulse hammering in her throat, she got out of the car and led him to the elevators, aware of him twining fine tendrils of exotic scent around her. Not susceptible enough to be coerced by it, she allowed herself to luxuriate in the sensation.