Chapter 7
Angels might scare us, but hunters scare most other people—including a lot of vampires. Reassure them. Convince them we’re civilized.
—A Retiring Guild Director to the Incoming Guild Director (Once, when a Slayer fell in Love with a Hunter)
Elena and Greta had arrived at the HQ to find a hunter shimmying his way across a rope strung up on the ceiling of a training salle that hadn’t changed all that much over the centuries…while his drunk compatriots threw blades at him that he attempted to dodge without falling off.
“What!” the climber had yelled when Elena questioned the sanity of such an act. “I’m wearing a stab-proof vest and pants!”
“Mortals and immortals being idiots is a fact with which I’m unfortunately familiar,” Greta had said in her usual flat tone. “Did you know certain angels once dared each other to jump into boiling lava? Sense cannot be taught to imbeciles.”
Shoulders shaking, Elena had said, “No, not that. Come on.” Leaving the drunken idiots to their shenanigans, she’d led Greta to a basement room thick with cigar smoke.
“Ellie, you’re late!” Malik, all long legs, perfect bone structure, and tightly curled hair against bronzed skin, had kicked out a chair for her even as he spoke. “Who’s the killer redhead?”
“Greta.” No further explanation. “Deal her in.”
Cards? Truly, Consort? That Greta’s mental voice was crystalline was no surprise; the woman had to be a power given her closest colleagues. Having Dmitri and Venom in your head on a regular basis wasn’t for the weak.
I show no emotion, have zero tells, the other woman had added. It will be embarrassing how quickly I decimate this group—after which I will go home. There is only so far I’m willing to extend myself even for you.
Go on, Elena had challenged, let’s see how fast you can clear us out.
They’d stumbled out of Guild HQ as dawn was breaking, their metaphorical pockets much lighter, and Greta so stunned that she hadn’t spoken for the past hour.
“How?” she’d muttered as they’d blinked against the morning light.
“How does that mortal with his ridiculous lime-green vest, and equally ridiculously pretty face, fool us with such ease? I know I have no tells!”
Elena had shrugged. “He’s a fucking shark—and hella fun to play with.
” Malik, with his charming grin and playful eyes, had reminded her of Demarco from their first meeting.
High likelihood he was a descendant. After all, the man had left behind a dynasty after siring seven children with the tattooist wife he’d adored to his last breath.
“How do you know so many degenerates?” Greta had muttered even as she smoothed her hair and sniffed at the fitted sleeve of her black pantsuit. “Ugh, I hate the smell of cigars.”
Yet she’d continued to come to card nights with Malik and the crew, until one dawn, Greta hadn’t returned home to the Tower.
Her and Malik’s relationship had lasted his entire mortal lifetime.
The hunter had been one of the few people who’d ever challenged Greta.
He’d also loved her with all of his huge heart, and when he died, Greta had tattooed his name over her own heart in a process that was beyond painful—and had to be redone yearly due to her level of vampiric healing.
“I want to feel the pain,” she’d said. “Malik deserves my pain, my memory. I waited an eternity for him and I had him for six precious decades. The memory of what we were together—and who I was with him—will carry me to the end of my existence.”
Elena had never seen Greta cry, not once, but she’d sat in silence with her many a night while the other woman smoked Malik’s favorite cigar, their friendship formed while neither one of them was looking.
Now, Greta gripped the edge of the roof and stared out at the clouds. “I never wanted to have children, not even when I was mortal. It was hard to avoid in those days, you understand, but I managed.”
“How did you figure it out?” Elena spread one hand over her abdomen.
“I’ve always been able to tell when a woman is with child—maybe I am part witch as was once rumored.
” A shrug. “Or maybe it’s because I saw you eat five raspberry-chocolate tartlets just an hour ago, then follow them up with a pickle sandwich.
After which you drank the pickle juice.” A shudder.
“You might as well be wearing a flashing sign.”
Groaning, Elena made a mental note to stop with the sudden urge to inhale everything in sight…even as her mouth watered at the mention of pickles.
“As I was saying,” Greta continued before Elena could reply. “I am not a children person, and part of that is because I can’t imagine being responsible for a tiny creature’s life.”
“You manage to keep your cats alive.” Greta’s first cat had been Roar, of the line of Illium’s beloved Smoke.
He’d gifted Greta a kitten from Smoke’s one and only litter—it turned out that, per Illium, Smoke had had “a secret boyfriend” prior to her journey to New York.
Which Illium had discovered when he took her to the vet for all the routine procedures, having been unable to do so in China, devastated as it was at the time.
Greta had ever had a cat from then on.
“Cats are rather more independent than babies.” The other woman squeezed Elena’s hand. “I am saying I understand your fear.”
This friendship, though it had stood a far longer span of time than her friendship with Sara, remained new in so many ways.
Greta knew about Ari and Belle and Marguerite, but she hadn’t shaken Elena awake from screaming nightmares, hadn’t been by her side when Jeffrey threw her out, hadn’t stood with her as she farewelled her mother and sisters in a final goodbye.
Don’t you keep that new best friend in the dark, either, you stubborn fool. Let them in. Let them be what they should be to you.
Sara’s voice again, her memory a haunting Elena hoped would never end, never fade. As for Sara’s advice…I can’t, Sara. Not yet.
Not with the nightmares so fresh; she’d had another one last night, and this time she’d drowned in her sisters’ blood before Raphael managed to wake her. “I don’t know if even I understand my fear,” she said, the skin of the Tower smooth and glittering blue under her tight grip.
“Our baby’s father is one of the ten most powerful beings in the entire world. And no one is in danger of going megalomaniacal like in the first decades of my angelic life.”
The name Zhou Lijuan had been all but erased from angelic history. Not her crimes, for those had to be known, had to be remembered and denounced. Only her identity—she was noted in the records as a cipher that meant To be forgotten.
Immortals could be pitiless.
“There’s no logical reason for my fear.”
“Elena.” Greta shook her head. “You, my friend with a mortal heart, should be the first person to realize that emotions aren’t logical. Fear most of all.”
Elena bit down on her lower lip, but Greta wasn’t done.
“Here,” she said, handing Elena a neatly folded printout that she’d pulled from a pocket of her pantsuit—technology and fashion might march on, but Greta would give up both her printer and her favorite form of clothing when she was good and dead.
“A vampire has given in to bloodlust in White Plains. Murdered two people, and was heading toward a school last he was spotted. Guards are already onsite, school quietly locked down, but the vampire is too old and deadly for anyone to be complacent. Go fight a monster, Ellie.”
Elena’s entire chest compressed, her insides tight and hot. “Thank you.”
Then, dropping off the roof without further words, she went and fought a monster—and in the bloody aftermath, as she stood with her blades dripping red while a school full of children sat safe and innocent, she found a small peace within.