Guild Hunter 02 - Angels' Flight by authors_sort Read Free Book Online

perfect ovals against Callan’s skin. “You get rid of Simone for me, become my consort and my grandfather’s right-hand man. The old transitioning to the new.”
     
    Callan’s jaw hardened. “Sorry, sweetheart. I’m not playing second fiddle to anyone—least of all a vicious brat who’d sell out her own family.”
     
    Ashwini saw the flash of surprise in Monique’s eyes theinstant before Callan kissed her. Hearing the other woman moan in the back of her throat, Ashwini decided she’d seen more than enough to form a conclusion, though what that conclusion might be, she had no idea. Two wrong turns later, she found herself back in her bathroom. Jumping out of the vent, she replaced the cover, then got into the shower and scrubbed herself until her skin stung.
     
    When she walked out into the bedroom, dressed in jeans and a tee, she wasn’t surprised to see Perida waiting for her. “We got worried when you didn’t answer the door,” the vampire said.
     
    Ashwini held out a hand, palm up. “Earplugs. Hate getting water in my ears.” Rubbing at her hair with a towel, she looked at the woman questioningly. “Where’s Janvier?”
     
    “Walking in the gardens.”
     
    Ashwini threw the towel over a chair. “I think I might join him.” She felt Perida’s eyes on her all the way to the roses where she’d spied Janvier. “You won’t believe what I saw,” she said, wondering if Monique and Callan were even now locked in that embrace powered by equal amounts of lust, ambition, and loathing.
     
    “Try me.”
     
    She did, had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes widen. “Think Callan still intends to go through with his plan of wiping out Antoine, then getting rid of Monique?” she asked.
     
    “If he wants to seize power in Atlanta,” Janvier said with the icy pragmatism of an almost-immortal, “he’ll have to eliminate Jean, Frédéric, and the others, too.”
     
    Ashwini thought of the ruthlessness she’d seen in Callan’s expression as he spoke to the Beaumont vampire. “He’s capable of it. But, no matter what he says, he’s also susceptible to Monique.”
     
    “There’s a chance Monique won’t want to be rescued,” Janvier pointed out, “not if she thinks she can get Callan ’round to her way of thinking.”
     
    “Doesn’t matter. Nazarach wants her.” And not even the most ambitious young vampire would dare gainsay their sire. Angels had torture down to a fine art—and those screamslocked in the walls of his home told her Nazarach was better at it than most. “You’d think,” she murmured, “that Monique would’ve had better sense than to ask to be Made after seeing the life Antoine and Jean lead.”
     
    “There are advantages to being a vampire.” Janvier stopped to pick up and bring the trailing edgeof a climbing rose to her nose.
     
    The scent was decadent, luxurious. “Maybe,” she said, taking another perfume-laced breath, “but once Nazarach has Monique back, he’ll use her as he might use a chess piece. And she has to let him. For a hundred years, she’ll have no freedom, no self-will. She’ll be less than a pet.”
     
    Dropping the rose, Janvier thrust his hands into his pockets. “You’ve never asked how I was Made.” His voice was missing its usual music, something brittle and hard in every syllable.
     
    “You fell in love with a vampire.”
     
    He froze. “Been researching me?” His anger was hidden but as apparent to her as the sickle-shaped moon in the soft summer sky.
     
    “Didn’t have to.” She shrugged. “Man like you, your personality, doesn’t easily accept submission. But if you decided to give yourself to someone, you’d do anything for that person—even if the choice half killed you.”
     
    “I’m so obvious?”
     
    “No.” She met his eyes, stripped away a single fragile layer of her own shields. “You’re like me.”
     
    “Ah.” That beautiful hair of his glittered under the moonlight as he began to walk again.