“Go ahead. I cleared it with the crime-scene folks.”
The grass prickling the underside of her wings, she placed one hand beside the dead girl’s head to brace herself, and bent down to sniff at her ravaged neck.
Iron. Old. Dry.
Soap.
Synthetic perfume.
Her heart skipped a beat.
Lush, lyrical, sensual, a scent so extraordinary it was beyond unique. “Black orchids,” she whispered under her breath, but there was something ... She was sure she’d caught hints of a subtle underlying note when the wind smashed into her and Raphael outside the house, but this scent was pure, so, so pure. However, given the erratic nature of her angel-sensing abilities, that wasn’t conclusive of anything.
“What?” Santiago came down beside her. “You think it might’ve been a pack of vamps?”
Swallowing against the near-certain knowledge that this was much, much worse, Elena held up a finger, then—going to her knees—bent close enough to the body that she could examine some of the wounds that weren’t crusted over with blood. “Not bite marks,” she said in surprise. “Slices. Tiny, tiny slices.” All over the victim’s body. Done by someone holding a blade, but the real question was, what or who had driven that hand?
“Yeah. Tortured.” The big detective rose to his feet with a groan. “Guild case or us?”
“Guild.” It wasn’t quite the truth. “No human did this.” Stripping off her gloves and holding them in one hand, she took the one Santiago held out to pull herself to her feet. “Thanks.”
“No problem. Biohazard bin’s up there.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
Walking back with him, she got rid of the gloves, then used her cell phone to call Raphael. “There’s something you need to see.”
20
Raphael took one look at the body and went very, very still. “It has been called the death of a thousand cuts.”
Even as Elena’s rational mind considered the implications of that, her eye kept going to those pretty forget-me-nots, to the old-fashioned friendship bracelet on the girl’s slender wrist. It seemed obscene to talk of ancient methods of torture while she lay so strangely innocent in the grass—but that, of course, was a mirage. “Didn’t that involve dismemberment?”
“Not when Caliane performed it.”
A chill kiss on the back of her neck, that confirmation. “I can’t be certain about the origin of the scent,” she said, having told him of the presence of black orchids. “I’ve only brushed up against your mother’s scent a couple of times, and never in a situation where I had the opportunity to tease out the notes.”
Raphael’s response wasn’t anything she might have expected. “I was speaking with Michaela when you called me.”
Elena fisted her hand at the mention of the female archangel. Beautiful in the most sensual of ways, Michaela had taken an instant dislike to Elena. The feeling was mutual. Except . . . it was no longer so easy to treat Michaela as the “Bitch Queen” and nothing more, not now that Elena knew the archangel had once lost a child. Elena would never forget the heartbreak she’d witnessed that terrible night at Michaela’s gracious home in the Refuge. “What did she say?”
“I hear compassion in your voice, Elena.” Raphael’s eyes were dark with warning when they met hers. “You must never make the mistake of weakening when it comes to Michaela. She chose the path she walks, and it is a path that may well have led to the death of another archangel.”
He’d said that to her before, and despite the fact that her human heart wanted to see something better in Michaela, she knew he was right. “I won’t ever lower my guard around her, don’t worry.”
Seemingly satisfied with her promise, he returned his attention to the body. “Another kill such as this was found in her territory last night.”
And if there were two . . . “Damn.”
“The killer was caught in that case, raving with madness.”
“That seems to be the pattern.” She looked up at the sound of the forensic investigators, waved them down. “Body’s all yours.”
As they came nearer, trying not to stare at Raphael while doing exactly that, the Archangel of New York moved a small distance from the body, choosing to stand right on the water’s edge.
“I can’t pinpoint the scent of the killer here.” Frustration churned through her as she followed him. “The area’s—”
“It may not signify,” Raphael said. “Dmitri spoke to me earlier today of a vampire who, from the evidence, appears to have set himself alight last night then stood in place as he burned. That is not the act of a sane man.”
Elena blew out a breath. “Yeah, good chance it was him. If Dmitri has a name, I can check his apartment, get the scent there, see if he was in this area at least.”
“Identification may take weeks, depending on whether anyone reports him missing—the fire turned the body to ash.” He flared out his wings and beyond them, the cops went motionless.
Elena could well understand their fascination. She’d touched those wings, felt that powerful body hot and demanding above her own, and still her chest went tight.
“I will speak to Jason,” Raphael said, not noticing the reaction of the humans, “have him check with his informants about other murders that may be connected.” Wings spread to their breathtaking widest, he rose into the sky. Contact me the instant you sense any hint of her presence—she would crush you, Elena, and think nothing of it.