The body went silent under her hands.
Vampires could survive a lot, but she knew this one was dead, a tool that had become a liability. “What a fucking waste.” He was so young. Likely not even a decade into his vampirism. Going by his face, he’d been Made in his late twenties. “Some kind of immortality.”
Aodhan’s eyes were glacial when he looked up. “Track the other. I’ll be right behind you.”
“We need the body.”
A curt nod.
Elena stood, gun in hand, angling her head into the wind. The scents had changed now, become charged with fear and a nauseating undertone of arousal. Violence as a drug—it seemed to be an inevitable side effect of immortality for some. Shaking off the extraneous thought, she began to walk through the square, tracking the second shooter on the ground.
He’d gone a fair distance, crossing the entire length of the courtyard, down a long, winding passageway filled with carvings that exited into a sunny plaza, up a flight of stairs and across three curved bridges, then down into what was obviously a very private section of the city. No lanterns swung from the sole tree she could see. No beautifully clad women peered flirtatiously from behind deftly lowered fans. No music played.
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.”