Elena nodded with equal solemnity. “An intriguing hypothesis, Professor Kapur. Perhaps you should apply for a VPA research grant.”
As Vivek cracked up at her reference to the Vampire Protection Authority—which seemed to exist to slap guild hunters with “excessive force” violations, usually while the hunters were still bleeding from vampire bites and clawings—Sara said, “If you two comedians are finished, I need you to haul ass, Ellie. Angel involved is very senior and very angry. Name’s Imani.”
Elena could’ve resigned from the Guild years ago. Being Consort to the Archangel of New York tended to tie up a woman’s time. But she’d clung to the Guild with her fingernails, being a hunter as much a part of her psyche as breathing. Even more so because she was hunter-born: a bloodhound with the capacity to track vampires by scent.
Rusted oak, champagne, sugar mixed with camphor, a cascade of flowers.
Just four scents among the millions in the world. Her brain had the capacity to narrow down a particular scent to a particular vampire. Vivek, for example, was cold and fresh river water and a vivid burst of aquamarine shards. She knew the latter wasn’t a scent, but it was the only way she’d found to describe what she picked up around her friend.
As for the angel-tracking ability she’d begun to develop after waking as an angel, that remained erratic at best and nonexistent at worst.
“I know Imani,” she said to Sara.
“I was hoping you’d say that. She’s . . . touchy.”
That was one word for the angel in question. “I’ll calm her down.”
“I’ve sent the details to your phone. You want a necklet?”
“No, I’ll be fine.” No point detouring to Guild HQ for the vampire immobilization device when she already had the advantage of wings as well as a droplet of immortal strength. Not much. Laughable when compared to angelkind, but she was now much harder to hurt than any other hunter in the Guild. “If I can’t haul back a runner on my own, I need to be put in Guild remedial school.”
As Vivek grinned, Sara said, “Come by tonight for a coffee. I want to talk to you about something.”
“I’ll be there.” Hanging up, Elena pointed a finger at Vivek. “I do not withdraw my challenge about your most recently created word.”
“Your funeral.” Vivek had on his Scrabble poker face. “I’ll save the game to continue the next time you’re in.” A beep sounded behind him in the surveillance control center.
Turning his wheelchair around using his hands, he went to check on the alert. After much anguish, he’d retired his previous high-tech and networked electronic chair—the manual chair gave him a way to exercise his upper body without having to spend even longer with the physiotherapists. He’d bulked up considerably in the past couple of years, his shoulders strong and his arm muscles defined.
“Ellie, hey, wait.” He flicked up an image onto one of his many screens. “Signs of seismic activity out by the Catskills.”
“Shit.” She stared at the jagged lines that danced across the screen, her stomach suddenly in knots and images of the sparrows blazing to the forefront of her mind. One word loomed large in her thoughts: “Cascade.”
A confluence of time and unknown critical events that had ignited a power surge in the archangels who ruled the world, with a side-helping of random cataclysmic occurrences, the Cascade had demonstrated a tendency to spike then flatline as it built toward an endgame none of them could predict. It had been two and a half years since the last resurgence—back during her and Raphael’s trip to Morocco—and she’d been hoping the damn thing would go from dormant to stone dead.
Elena was sick of fucking zombies, impossible diseases that struck angels from the sky, and storms and quakes that left scars in the earth. Oh, and let’s not forget the Hudson turning crimson, as if the city was bleeding. That had been just lovely. “How bad?”
“Too deep and too weak for humans to feel. And it looks like I have a report from the seismic people at the university.” He read the e-mail. “Movement tagged as standard settling of the land. Only picked up because they’re testing the super-sensitive new equipment the Tower helped finance.”
Stomach unknotting, Elena blew out a quiet breath. No Cascade-linked insanity, then. No need to put on her tinfoil hat and start yelling about the end of the world. Just a tiny—normal—tremor deep in the earth. “Ping me if you get any more alerts, and make sure Dmitri knows too. I better get going on this hunt.”
Vivek swiveled his wheelchair around. “Happy hunting.” In his eyes, dark and intense, lived a feral hunger. It was as if his transition to vampirism had splintered more than two decades of grim-willed control.
Because Vivek, too, was hunter-born, the hunt in his blood.
That he hadn’t gone mad long ago was a testament to his incredible resolve. Elena had used him as backup on two recent jobs where he could situate himself on a rooftop and cover her using a sniper’s rifle. A number of other hunters had pulled him in the same way. For now, that seemed to be enough to take the edge off. “You, too,” she said with a nod at his control center. “Say hi to your man-crush for me.”
A raised middle finger before he turned back to the screens that flowed with data. “Come back when you’re ready to get massacred on the Scrabble board.”
Leaving the Tower’s tech hub with a final “You made up that word!”—to which Vivek called out, “Illiterate Luddite!”—she read the details of the job on her way to her and Raphael’s Tower suite. All she had on her were knives, and she liked to take a weapon with distance reach when on a retrieval.
Droplet of immortal strength or not, arrogance was a good way to get dead.
Just last week, Ransom had barely escaped being disemboweled by an aggressive vampire’s disgusting dirty claws. Some people had no sense of good hygiene. As it was, Ransom’s treasured leather jacket hadn’t escaped the attempted mauling unscathed.
He’d still be sulking over it if his wife hadn’t managed to source a near-identical jacket from who-knew-where: Librarians obviously had stellar research skills. And librarians married to guild hunters had nerves of steel. Per Ransom, his wife had told him to hose himself clean of the vampire blood before he set foot in their home.
Demarco had snorted when Ransom relayed that story, the shaggy blond of his hair in serious need of a cut. “I wouldn’t obey my wife’s orders like that—you gotta be the man in the relationship, wear the pants.”
“Sure,” Ransom had drawled, unperturbed. “I’ll pass your words of wisdom on to Nyree the next time she talks about inviting your sorry ass over for dinner. Enjoy the moldy bread in your fridge.”
Laughing at the memory of how Demarco had clutched at his heart and fallen off his chair, Elena entered the suite. She grabbed her crossbow first and strapped it to her left thigh. Lightweight, with the extra bolts carried in a new flat quiver she would strap to her other thigh, she treasured and babied it like it was “her precious.”
Ransom’s words.
Also true.
She decided against a gun; she kept up her training, but the crossbow combined with blades was more her thing. Today, she slid a long blade into the sheath that ran down her back. The near-white of her hair was already in a tight braid, and she had her chunky hunting knife in her boot, so all that was left for her to do was check that the knives she wore in her forearm sheaths were all snugly slotted in and she was done.
Striding across the thick carpet of the living area, she opened the doors that led out to a railingless balcony and stepped into the crisp white of a winter’s day.
The cold slapped her. Hard.
She gritted her teeth, grateful for her long-sleeved thermal black top. It had been designed especially for her, to provide a measure of protection at high altitudes. She had nowhere near ordinary angelic levels of cold toleration. The squadron with whom Raphael had gone out in the pre-dawn darkness were probably in sleeveless tunics.