Instead, there was only an angel sitting on a marble bench beneath that tree with its winter-green leaves, a vampire at her feet. Elena didn’t see it coming. One moment the vampire was kneeling, his chest heaving. And the next, his head rolled to a stop at Elena’s feet, having been cut off with ruthless ease.
“Stupid,” Anoushka murmured, putting the wickedly curved blade on the bench beside her and brushing at her flowing white skirt as if unaware of the blood that spotted it, covering the tiny mirrors worked into the embroidery. “Leading you straight to me.”
Elena couldn’t ignore the head touching her foot, strands of hair drifting across the black leather of her boot. She saw Anoushka’s lips tilt upward as she took a step to the side. “You won’t have many men left if you kill so indiscriminately,” Elena said, gauging if she could shoot and hit Anoushka’s wing, given the way the other angel was sitting.
Conclusion: Uncertain.
Running wasn’t an option either. Not unless she wanted a blade buried in her back.
“If you’re waiting for the broken one,” Anoushka said, “he’s been detained. Unfortunately, before he could call for reinforcements.” The angel rose to her feet. “Do you hear that?”
It was eerie, how silence could weigh so much. “Why target me?”
“You know already, but you’re trying to stall me. Shall I humor you?” Anoushka kept her wings tight to her back as she picked up her weapon, continuing to deprive Elena of a clear target. Hitting an angel in the body with a bullet, even one of Vivek’s special bullets, was a no go—you might as well be defending yourself with a flyswatter. Only the wings were vulnerable.
Her eyes went to the knife. She recognized it from her weapons class at Guild Academy. It was called a kukri, the curved blade consisting of a single sharp edge. Perfect if you were looking for something with which to efficiently separate a head from its body.
Anoushka’s next words proved as much. “It’s really very practical—walking into the Cadre’s current meeting with your head as my trophy will, as the humans say, make a splash no one will be able to ignore. I planned to do it at the ball itself, but one must adapt.” A sigh. “It’s a pity we have so little time. I actually might have liked you had things been different.” The kukri turned into a blur in her hand.
And Elena realized the Princess knew exactly what she was doing with that blade.
She didn’t hesitate, firing her gun at Anoushka the instant the angel moved, her wings spreading just a fraction. But Neha’s daughter, moving with that reptilian speed, snapped her wings to her back before the bullet reached her. It lodged harmlessly in the opposite wall in a shower of plaster. Fuck! Elena shot again, had the satisfaction of seeing blood bloom on Anoushka’s leg, but the angel ignored that, reaching for what Elena had taken to be a belt.
It wasn’t.
The whip wrapped around Elena’s wrist with the quickness of a snake’s tongue, threatening to snap her bones. Shooting as she fell, she managed to distract Anoushka enough to pull her hand free. But the gun was out of bullets, and, as Galen had once warned her, she didn’t have the luxury of reloading, not with an opponent who needed a scant instant to kill.
Dropping the useless metal, she rolled to her feet, a knife falling into her hand.
“So,” Anoushka said, the top of her left wing bearing a burn mark that had her hissing in pain. “That ruffian Raphael insists on keeping in his Seven managed to teach you something after all.”
“I’m hunter-born,” she said, shifting to keep Anoushka off balance as the angel played with the blade in her hand.
Anoushka moved with her, sinuous, graceful.
Recalling Venom’s little trick, she kept her own gaze slightly to the left. Anoushka laughed. “Oh, you are smart. Such a shame you were too young to save your family.”
Elena jerked as if kicked, her guard dropping for a fragment of a second. Anoushka struck, slicing deep into Elena’s arm before she managed to get out of the way. Ignoring the burn, ignoring the heart-pain caused by the angel’s words, Elena caught a second knife in her free hand. “To the death, then?”
“Did you really think otherwise?” Anoushka swept out with the kukri, her movements blindingly fast.
Elena threw both knives, heard Anoushka deflect one with the blade as she twisted out of the way of the other. And still the angel managed to cut a line into Elena’s unmarked arm.
The bitch was playing with her.
It was, Elena realized, Anoushka’s sole weakness. That and an ego that made her believe herself fit to be an archangel. “They say your blood is poison.”
“Thomas drank from me before he went to scare you.” A piece of swift bladework that had Elena falling to the earth, only just managing to roll out of the way before Anoushka sliced off a piece of her wing. “Impressive.” A mocking bow, as if they were sparring in the most civilized of fashions.
She could feel the blood loss from the deep cuts on her arms beginning to have an effect. Not disabling. Not yet. But it was going to slow her down soon. “Thomas’s death was a delayed response to the poison?”
“He thought he’d been honored above all others, allowed to sip from my veins.”
“So he was dead no matter what happened, even if he didn’t find me?”
“He was getting a little too possessive, the sweet dear.” A sigh. “Such fools are men. Even Raphael—he should’ve killed you the first time he met you. Now you are his weakness.”
Elena saw something in Anoushka’s expression change at that instant, and knew death was looking her in the face. She threw a blade. It went harmlessly to the ground as Anoushka moved . . . but that move put her in direct sunlight, blinding her for a split second. Elena’s next two knives slammed home in her eye sockets, driving her backward.
Anoushka screamed, dropped the kukri. Ignoring it, Elena retrieved the short sword hanging from her belt and—without giving herself a chance to think—slammed the blade down into the angel’s heart, pinning her to the earth. Blood bloomed across the white of Anoushka’s top as Elena opened up her mind and screamed. Raphael! She didn’t care who the fuck else heard her, as long as he did.
Hissing in open fury, Anoushka ripped the knives from her eyes, throwing them to the side. As she jerked upward, in spite of the blade that anchored her to the earth, her nails clawed, Elena remembered that Anoushka was her mother’s daughter. Moving out of the way in the nick of time, she twisted the blade while it remained in the angel’s body. Anoushka’s scream was a thin, bloodcurdling cry as she fell back to the ground, her poisonous fingers dropping to flutter on the paving stones. Fighting the nausea in her stomach, Elena twisted the blade again, turning Anoushka’s heart into so much mush.
It would regenerate, but right now, Anoushka lay twitching on the ground, her mutilated eyes bleeding red on her cheeks.
Her mother’s eyes, so beautiful, so like her own, sightless and distorted, the veins scarlet against the white.
Elena wrenched herself out of the memory, fighting the abyss that threatened to suck her in, leave her helpless.
“I’m not strong enough. Forgive me, my babies.”
Elena had tried not to hear those whispered words. She’d been half asleep that night, Beth still so small, tucked in beside her. Her baby sister had always been afraid of her new room in the Big House. But she’d slept soundlessly that night, as if sure Elena would keep her safe. Only Elena had heard their mother enter their bedroom, only Elena had tried not to understand.