Angels of Darkness Read online

  “Who will you miss when they are gone?” she asked, deeply curious about what lay behind the hard shield of his personality. “Do you have human acquaintances and friends?” She didn’t expect him to answer, so when he did, she had to hide her own surprise. Only decades of experience made that possible—Eitriel had left her with that, if nothing else.

  “I was born on an English moor,” he said, his voice shifting to betray the faintest trace of an accent from times long gone.

  She found it fascinating. “When were you Made?” she asked. “You were older.” Vampires did age, but so slowly that the changes were imperceptible. The lines of maturity on Noel’s face came from his human lifetime.

  “Thirty-two,” he said, his eyes on a plump bumblebee as it buzzed over to the dewberry shrub heavy with fruit on Nimra’s right. “I thought I had another life in front of me, but when I found that road cut off, I decided what the hell, I might as well attempt to become a Candidate. I never expected to be chosen on the first attempt.”

  Nimra angled her head, conscious that angels would’ve fought to claim him for their courts, this male with both strength and intelligence. “This other life, did it involve a woman?”

  “Doesn’t it always?” There was no bitterness in his words. “She chose another, and I wanted no one else. After I was Made, I watched over her and her children and somewhere along the way, I became a friend rather than a former lover. Her descendants call me Uncle. I mourn them when they pass.”

  Nimra thought of the wild windswept beauty of the land where he’d been born, found it fit him to perfection. “Do they still live on the moors?”

  A nod, his hair shining in the sunlight. “They are a proud lot, prouder yet of the land they call their own.”

  “And you?”

  “The moor takes ahold of your soul,” he said, the rhythms of his homeland dark and rich in his voice. “I return when it calls to me.”

  Compelled by the glimpse into his past, this complex man, she found her wings unfolding even farther, the Louisiana sun a warm caress across her feathers. “Why does your accent disappear in normal conversation?”

  A shrug. “I’ve spent many, many years away from the moors, but for visits here and there.” Dropping the stone, he rose to his feet, six feet plus of tall, muscled male with an expression that was suddenly all business. “Fen, Asirani, Christian, and Amariyah,” he said. “Are they the only ones who have access to you on that intimate a level?”

  “There is one other,” she said, aware the moment was over. “Exeter is an angel who has been with me for over a century. He prefers to spend his time in his room in the western wing, going over his scholarly books.”

  “Will he be at dinner?”

  “I’ll ask him to attend.” It was difficult to think of sweet, absentminded Exeter wanting to cause her harm. “I cannot suspect him, but then, I cannot suspect any of them.”

  “At present, there’s nothing that points to any one of them beyond the others, so no one can be eliminated.” Arms folded, he turned to face her. “Augustus—tell me about him.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.” Snapping her wings shut, she rose to her feet. “He is a friend who thinks he needs to be more, that I need him to be more. It has been handled.”

  Noel could see that Nimra wasn’t used to being questioned or pushed. “I don’t think Augustus believes it has been handled.”

  A cold-eyed smile. “As we discussed earlier,” she said, “such things are not in your purview.”

  “On the contrary.” Closing the distance between them, he braced his hands on his hips. “Frustrated men do stupid and sometimes deadly things.”

  A hint of a frown as she reached up to brush away a tiny white blossom that had fallen on her shoulder. “Not Augustus. He has always been a friend first.”

  “No matter what you choose to believe, his feelings aren’t those of a friend.” Noel had glimpsed untrammeled rage on the big angel’s face when Augustus had first realized what Noel apparently was to Nimra.

  White lines bracketed Nimra’s mouth. “The point is moot. Augustus visits, but he wasn’t here when the Midnight was put into my tea.”

  “You said certain servants are trusted with your food,” Noel pointed out, an exquisite, enticing scent twining through his veins, one that had nothing to do with the gardens. “Yet your focus is clearly on your inner court in the hunt for the traitor. Why?”

  “The servants are human. Why would they chance the lethal punishment?” she asked with what appeared to be genuine puzzlement. “Their lives are already so short.”

  “You’d be surprised what mortals will chance.” He thrust a hand through his hair to quell the urge to reach out, twist a blue-black curl around his finger. It continued to disquiet him, how easily she drew him when nothing had penetrated the numbness inside him for months—especially when he had yet to glimpse the nature of the power that was at the root of her reputation. “How many servants do I have to take into account?”

  “Three,” Nimra informed him. “Violet, Sammi, and Richard.”

  He made a mental note of the names, then asked, “What will you do today?”

  Obviously still annoyed at him for daring to disagree with her, she shot him a look that was pure regal arrogance. “Again, it’s nothing you need to know.”

  He was “only” two hundred and twenty-one years old, but he’d spent that time in the ranks of an archangel’s men, the past hundred years in the guard just below the Seven. He had his own arrogance. “It might not be,” he said, stepping close enough that she had to tip back her head to meet his gaze, something he knew she would not appreciate, “but I was being polite and civilized, trying to make conversation.”

  Nimra’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “I think you have never been polite and civilized. Stop making the effort—it’s ridiculous.”

  The statement startled a laugh out of him, the sound rough and unused, his chest muscles stretching in a way they hadn’t done for a long time.

  Nimra found herself taken aback by the impact of Noel’s laugh, by the way it transformed his face, lit up the blue of his eyes. It was a glimpse of who he’d been before the events at the Refuge—a man with a hint of wicked in his eyes and the ability to laugh at himself. So when he angled an elbow in invitation, she slipped her hand into the crook of it.

  His body heat seeped through the thin fabric of the shirt he wore rolled up to his elbows, to touch her skin, his muscles fluid under her fingers as they walked. For a moment, she forgot that she was an angel four hundred years his senior, an angel someone wanted dead, and simply became a woman taking a walk with a handsome man who was beginning to fascinate her, rough edges and all.

  Three days later, Noel had a very good idea of how the court functioned. Nimra was its undisputed center, but she was no prima donna. The word “court” was in fact a misnomer. This was no extravagant place with formal dinners every night and courtiers dressed up to impress, their primary tasks being to look pretty and kiss ass.

  Nimra’s court was a highly functional unit, the capable skill of her men and women evident. Christian—who showed no sign of thawing to Noel’s presence—handled the day-to-day business affairs, including managing the investments that kept the court wealthy. He was assisted in certain tasks by Fen, though from what Noel had seen, it was more of a mentor-mentee relationship. Fen was passing the torch to Christian, who might’ve been older in years, but was younger in experience.

  Asirani, by contrast, was Nimra’s social secretary. “She rejects the majority of the invitations,” the frustrated vampire said to him on the second day, “which makes my job very challenging.” However, the invitations—from other angels, high-level vampires, and humans eager to make contact with the ruling angel—continued to pour in, which meant Asirani was kept busy.

  Exeter, the scholar, lived up to his reputation. An eccentricappearing individual with tufts of dusty gray hair that stuck out in all directions and wings of an astonishing deep yellow s
troked with copper, he seemed to spend his time with his head in the clouds. However, a closer look proved him to be a source of both advice and information for Nimra when it came to angelic politics. Fen, by contrast, had his finger on the pulse when it came to the vampiric and human populations.

  It was only Amariyah who seemed to have no real position, aside from her care of her father. “Do you remain in this court because of Fen?” he asked her that night after a rare formal dinner, as they stood on the balcony under the silver light of a half-moon, the humid air tangled with the sounds of insects going about their business and a lush dark that was the bayou.

  The other vampire sipped from a wineglass of bloodred liquid that sang to Noel’s own senses. But he’d fed earlier, and so the hunger was nothing urgent, simply a humming awareness of the potent taste of iron. Before, he would’ve ignored the glass in her hand to focus on the pulse in her neck, on her wrist, but the idea of putting his mouth to her skin, anyone’s skin, of having someone that close—it made his entire body burn cold, the hunger shutting down with harsh finality.

  “No,” she said at last, flicking out her tongue to collect a drop of blood on her plump lower lip. “I owe Nimra my allegiance for the way I was Made, and while I have nothing to compare it to, the others say this is a good territory. I’ve heard stories of other courts that make the hairs rise on my arms.”

  Noel knew those stories were more apt to be true than not. Many immortals were so inhuman that they considered humans and vampires nothing but toys for their amusement, ruling through a mix of bone-deep terror and sadistic pain. In contrast, while Nimra’s servants and courtiers treated her with utmost respect, there was no acrid touch of fear, no skittering nervousness.

  And yet . . . No ruler who had even a vein of kindness within her could’ve held off challengers as brutal as Nazarach. It made him question the truth of everything he’d seen to date, wonder if he was being played by the most skillful of adversaries, an angel who’d had six centuries to learn her craft.

  Amariyah took a step closer, too close. “You sense it, too, don’t you? The lies here.” A whisper. “The hints of truth concealed.” Her scent was deep and luxuriant, hotly sensual with no subtle undertones.

  The bold scent suited the truth of her nature—all color and sex and beauty with no thought to future consequences. Young. He felt ancient in comparison. “I’m new to this court,” he said, though he was disturbed by her question, her implication. “I’m very aware of what I don’t know.”

  A curve to her lips that held a vicious edge. “And you must of course please your mistress. Without her, you have no place here.”

  “I’m no cipher,” Noel said, knowing that everyone here had to have investigated his background by now. Christian clearly had, though Noel didn’t think the angel would’ve shared what he’d dug up—there was a stiff kind of pride to Christian that said he was above gossip—but he wasn’t the only one with connections. The safest course would be to assume the entire inner court knew of his past—the good, and the ugly. “I can always return to my service in Raphael’s guard.”

  Fingers brushing his jaw, warm and caressing. “Why did you leave it?”

  He took a discreet step back, recoiling inwardly from the uninvited touch. “I completed my Contract over a century ago, but remained with Raphael because working for an archangel is exhilarating.” He’d seen and done incredible things, used every bit of his skill and intelligence to complete the tasks he’d been set. “But Nimra is . . . unique.” That, too, was true.

  Amariyah’s tone tried for a false lightness but her bitterness was too deep to be hidden. “She’s an angel. Vampires are no match for their beauty and grace.”

  “It depends on the vampire,” Noel said, turning to face the open balcony doors. His gaze caught on the tableau inside the main room—Asirani touching Christian’s arm in an invitation that was unmistakable. Dressed in a cheongsam of deepest indigo bordered with gold, her hair swept off her face, her vibrant beauty was a stunning counterpoint to Christian’s almost acetic elegance.

  The angelic male leaned down to hear what it was she had to say, but he held himself with a severity that was unnatural, his mouth set in an unsmiling line.

  “Look at them,” Amariyah murmured, and he realized she’d followed his line of sight. “Asirani has ever tried to gain Christian’s affections, but she falls a poor second in comparison to Nimra.” Again, the words held hidden blades.

  “Asirani is a stunning woman in her own right.” Noel watched as Christian tugged off the vampire’s hands with implacable gentleness and walked away. Asirani’s expression shut down, her spine a rod of steel.

  Amariyah shrugged. “Shall we walk back inside?”

  Noel had the feeling she’d expected far more support for her views than she’d received from him. “I think I’ll stay awhile longer.”

  She left without a word, stalking into the main room in a flash of brilliant red that was the tight silk of her ankle-length dress, the fall of her coal black hair stroking over the lush curves of her body. He watched her walk up to Asirani, lay her hand on the other woman’s shoulder, squeeze. As she dipped her head to speak to the vampire, he sensed another feminine presence, this one a complex, mysterious orchid to Amariyah’s showy rose.

  CHAPTER 5

  When he glanced over the balcony, it was to see Nimra walking arm in arm with Fen along an avenue of night-blooming flowers, the elderly man’s steps slow and awkward in comparison to her grace, his hand trembling on the cane. Yet the way Nimra compensated for his age and speed told Noel that this was something they did often, the angel with her wings of jewel-dusted brown, and the human man in the twilight of his life.

  Compelled by the puzzle of her, Noel found himself walking down the steps to the garden to follow in their wake. An unexpected meow had him stopping on the last step and looking down into the dark, his vision more acute than a mortal’s. Mimosa lay under a bush full of tiny starlike flowers closed up for the night, her body quivering.

  The intrepid cat hadn’t come to Noel in the days he’d been here, but tonight she stayed in place as he bent down and picked her up, holding her close to the warmth of his chest. “Are you cold, old girl?” he murmured, stroking her with one hand. When she continued to shiver, he opened up the buttons of his formal black shirt and put her against his skin. Dropping her head, she curled into him, her shivers starting to fade. “There you go.”

  He continued to stroke her as he walked the way Fen and Nimra had disappeared. Mimosa was fragile under his hand, as fine boned as her mistress. It was strangely soothing to hold her, and for the first time in a long while, Noel thought back to the boy he’d been. He’d had a pet, too, a great old mutt who had followed Noel around with utter faithfulness until his body gave out. Noel had buried him on the moor, steeped the ground in his tears where no one could see him.

  Mimosa stirred against his chest as he turned the corner, catching the scent of her mistress. Nimra was on the other side of the moon-silvered pond in front of him, her wings sweeping over the grass as she bent to check some drowsy blooms, the lazy wind shaping the dark blue of her gown to her body with a lover’s attention. Fen sat on a stone bench on this side, and the quiet patience with which he watched her held complete devotion.

  Not Fen, Noel decided. The old man had always been an unlikely conspirator in the plot to disable or kill Nimra, but the expression on his face this night destroyed even the faintest glimmer of suspicion. No man could look at a woman in such a way and then watch the light fade forever from her eyes. “Strength and heart and courage,” Fen said without turning around. “There is no other like her.”

  “Yes.” Walking closer, Noel took a seat beside Fen, Mimosa purring against his skin. “I think,” he said, his gaze on the angel who even now tugged at things deep inside of him, “you need to send Amariyah from this court.”

  A quiet sigh, a weathered hand clenching on the cane. “She has ever had a jealousy toward angels that I�
��ve never understood. She is a beautiful woman, a near-immortal, and yet all she sees are the things she can’t have, can’t do.”

  Noel said nothing, because Fen spoke the truth. Amariyah might see herself as an adult, but she was a spoiled child in many ways.

  “I sometimes think,” Fen continued, “I did her a disfavor by asking Nimra to take my years of service into account as part of my daughter’s Contract. A century of service might have taught her to value what she is—for the angels value it.”

  Noel wasn’t so sure. He’d seen Amariyah hold up a cup of coffee in front of Violet only the day before, tell the little maid that it was cold, then pour the liquid very deliberately onto the floor. There had been other acts when she thought herself unseen, and then the conversation tonight. The selfishness in her nature seemed innate, as immutable as stone. But whether it had turned deadly remained to be seen.

  “Yours was a gift of love,” he said to Fen as Nimra rose from her investigation of the plants, looked over her shoulder.

  It was familiar now, the way his skin went tense in a waiting kind of expectation at the touch of her gaze. They hadn’t made physical contact again since that walk in the garden, but Noel was discovering that, doubts about her true nature or not, his body was no longer averse to the idea of intimacy. Not when it came to this one woman.

  He’d never had an angelic lover before. He wasn’t pretty enough to be pursued by those angels who kept harems of men, and he was glad for it. On the flip side, most angels were far too inhuman for the raw sexuality of his nature. Nimra, however, was like no other angel he’d ever met, a mystery within an enigma.

  He’d seen her in the gardens more than once, her fingers literally in the earth. Once or twice, when he’d muttered something less than sophisticated under his breath, her eyes had sparkled not with rebuke, but with humor. And now, as she circled the pond to come to stand with her hand on Fen’s shoulder, her hair tumbling around her in soft curls, her expression was curious in a way he found unexpected in an angel of her age and strength.