1

Elena noticed the sparrows with the periphery of her mind.

The small birds were dipping and dancing beyond the Tower windows, their wings nearly brushing the glass. For a second, she felt a chill on the back of her neck, but then the sparrows flew off to do sparrow business and she realized she was being paranoid. Just because the city’s birds had gone all creepy and otherworldly once didn’t mean every sparrow was a harbinger.

Sometimes a bird was just a bird.

She returned to her Scrabble death match with Vivek.

Ten minutes later, the two of them were taking an insane amount of pleasure in arguing over a word when Sara called to ask her to track a young vampire who thought he could skip out on his Contract. “Why?” she said to both Sara and Vivek, after putting the conversation on speaker.

“Because you’re a Guild Hunter, and we find and haul back runaway vampires,” was Sara’s dry response. “If you don’t know that by now, Ellie, there’s no hope for you.”

“No.” Elena leaned back in her chair across from Vivek. “Why do a certain percentage of baby vamps think that (a) all the nasty, terrible things they’ve heard about the old angels aren’t true, and (b)—after discovering that, in fact, all the previous knowledge they had is true, why do they think they’ll be the one wet-behind-the-ears idiot who’ll make it to freedom?”

Both of those things made zero sense to Elena. You’d have to be blind, deaf, and mentally unhinged not to realize that angelkind was not human in any way, shape, or form. To a being who had lived a thousand years, what were mortals and new-Made vampires but bugs to be crushed? Nothing but fragile fireflies. Pretty perhaps, if your tastes ran that way, but gone and forgotten in mere heartbeats.

That Elena was now the consort of the most powerful immortal in North America didn’t change her bone-deep understanding of that searing truth. Raphael was learning to act with more humanity because of the bond of love that tied them together, but he wasn’t human, and he never would be; it’d be like asking a ferocious tiger to turn tame. An impossibility—and a destruction.

Raphael was a glorious fury, a power.

As Elena was a newborn angel with a heart that would always be mortal, even should she live ten thousand years.

“I have an answer.” Vivek raised his hand, his sharply handsome face bearing a cheek-creasing grin, and the rich brown of his skin lit with good humor.

It had been a long time since Elena had seen any sign of the petulance and pettiness that had once been as much a part of him as his striking intellect. Then Vivek had controlled the Cellars, the hidey hole the Guild kept for hunters who needed to lie low for a while—such as a wayward hunter who might’ve slit the throat of a vampire so brutally powerful he was an archangel’s second.

Elena still wasn’t sorry about that. Dmitri had deserved to feel the lethal edge of her knife and more. And it wasn’t as if he’d been at any risk of dying. The arrogant fuck had blown her a kiss while his shirt was wet with darkest crimson, the blood loss nothing to a vampire that strong.

Not that his lack of injuries and twisted delight in the violent interaction had stopped him from stalking Elena—hence her need to disappear into the Cellars. In that underground world, Vivek had been king, and he’d relished his power. Piss him off and you’d say good-bye to air-conditioning, your room a sauna—and forget about fresh coffee. These days, however, the Cellars were someone else’s domain; and, like her, Vivek was growing into a strange new skin.

In the five years since he’d been Made a vampire, the formerly tetraplegic guild hunter had regained the use of his arms and most of his upper body. Even though his lower body remained numb to sensation and offered no way for him to get out of the wheelchair he’d been in since childhood, Vivek wasn’t complaining.

The healers had predicted it would take decades for him to regain even basic movement.

“Enlighten us,” Sara said in response to Vivek’s declaration, her tone distinctly amused. Whispers coming through the line told Elena her best friend was clearing paperwork while she spoke to them; the Guild director’s job was never finished.

“The transition to vampirism,” Vivek said in an ostentatiously pompous tone, “causes a reaction in a small percentage of vampires that turns on the idiot gene.” He held up a finger in a “pay attention” stance. “Said gene is located on chromosome pair twenty-four, colloquially known as the vampire chromosome.”

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.