Archangel's Blade by Nalini Singh Page A

he, too, went to bed after about an hour.
    Now, packing up her laptop and the photocopies she’d made from a number of texts, she headed back to her room. Her small, stifling cell of a room—exhaustion or not, she knew sleep was going to be an impossibility. Figuring Ashwini would be up, since the other hunter had left after being called in for a local hunt, she picked up her cell phone.
    â€œHonor, what do you need?”
    â€œCan you talk?”
    â€œYeah, just got home after pulling in the idiot vamp.”
    â€œAlready?” That had to be some kind of a record.
    â€œHe had the bright idea to—get this—hide at his mom’s. Like that isn’t the first place we’d look.”
    It was at times like this that Honor was forcibly reminded that vampires had once been human. The echoes could take decades to fade . . . though she was sure none remained in Dmitri. “You said something about an apartment being free in your building last time you were here,” she said, angry at herself for being unable to stop thinking about the lethal, sensual creature who’d looked at her with eyes full of unhidden intent. “Don’t suppose it still is?”
    â€œNope. Because I put your name down for it.”
    Honor’s butt hit the bed. “You knew.”
    â€œIt’s open plan,” Ashwini said, instead of answering the implied question. “Glass everywhere, and while that would be a security hazard lower down, you’ll be on the thirty-first floor. I might’ve sort of picked the lock on your storage unit and moved all your stuff in last week, but if you tell anyone, I’ll say the gremlins did it.”
    At any other time, with any other person, Honor would’ve been angry, but this was Ash, who had understood that Honor needed to escape before she had herself. “I owe you one.”
    â€œWant me to come pick you up? I still have the car I signed out for the hunt.”
    Honor glanced around her room. “Give me a couple of hours to pack up here.” She didn’t have much, but it was an unspoken rule that the bed was to be stripped, the floor vacuumed, and any trash removed, before departure. “I’ll meet you by the front gate.”
    â€œHonor?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œIt’s good to have you back.”

5
    He’d lied to Favashi.
    Dmitri maneuvered the Ferrari back into Manhattan, having made an early morning trip across the river to the Angel Enclave—to Raphael’s home.
    During the time he’d been caged, he had once threatened to feed Isis to her hounds. But in actuality, after he’d stabbed the angel so many times that her heart had been nothing but thick, bloody pulp, Raphael had wrenched off her head with a single vicious pull. Then together, the two of them had cut the bitch up into small pieces, but not to throw to her hounds. No, they had burned her to ash in a blaze set in the center of her courtyard. Unlike an archangel, Isis hadn’t been powerful enough to return from that.
    Dmitri had never regretted the brutality of what they had done. It had been necessary to make sure she would never again rise. He only wished they could’ve taken longer, made her scream and beg and plead . . . as his Ingrede must have. But Misha had been alone and scared in the cold, lightless place beneath the keep, returning to him Dmitri’s number one priority.
    â€œPapa! Papa!” His son, attempting to crawl across the stone, small hands swollen and bruised from his futile attempts to claw away the manacle around his neck, the unspeakable thing neither Dmitri nor Raphael had been able to remove without hurting him.
    â€œShh, Misha.” He tried to keep his voice calm, to not allow his agony to show through as he took those broken hands into his own, brought them to his lips. “It is only a scratch. Papa is fine.”
    Having taken the key from Isis, he unlocked the iron that held Misha