Linda Thomas-Sundstrom – Angel Unleashed (страница 8)

“Damn you,” she said, appearing beside him from out of nowhere with the ease of having just dropped from the sky.

The sky thing wasn’t possible, of course, Rhys knew, since the wings on her back were fake.

He feinted to the right. Simultaneously, she moved left in a choreographed fighting pattern that split the oncoming vamp fledglings into two groups.

“Hell, do I now have to worry about you?” he silently griped.

“I was thinking the same thing. About you,” she returned in the same manner.

“You can hear me?”

“No need to shout, Knight.”

“You heard things I might have thought earlier?”

“Anyone within a five-mile radius could have heard you.”

She went for two of the bloodsuckers as if she had been born to the art of wielding a blade.

Rhys struck the sweet spot in one fledgling’s chest with his knife, and that fledgling went down in a flurry of musty-smelling gray ash. Spinning on his heels, he embedded the stake in the second vamp’s chest and left it there as the vamp staggered back a few steps before what was left of it became a funnel of ash.

His new fighting partner had taken the brunt of things, with another of the vamps going after what it incorrectly assumed might be the weaker link. Big mistake.

The woman beside him moved like lightning, like a storm in human guise, and with a fighting grace Rhys had never before seen in any but his brothers. Fast, sure, talented, she was all liquid motion. Prepared to jump to her aid, Rhys instead watched at a standstill, his body reacting to each move she made as if he’d made it.

His pulse was again racing. This immortal woman was fast, flexible, canny and dexterous. Tracking her movements roused emotions long compressed deep in his soul. How had he missed this creature’s existence? Who the hell was she, and why couldn’t he reach the answer to that question when it was buried somewhere inside his mind?

Like a white whirlwind, the female parried, spun and thrust her blade to victory over those ornery bloodsuckers. And when the street had been cleared of fanged parasites, and the two mortals had run off to safety with a story to tell that no one would believe unless they had seen such a thing for themselves, she turned to Rhys with a stern expression on her incredibly beautiful face.

Speaking with the same throaty voice that had caused his muscles to twitch in the shop behind them, she said, “The mortals won’t remember. I’ve seen to that, and you owe me one.”

She wiped her short silver blade on her leather-clad thigh and turned from him.

“You truly imagined I’d need help?” Rhys asked, amused and far too fascinated with the curve of that lean thigh for his own good.

“Well, maybe I just needed to exert some energy,” she admitted, turning back. “I was in that damn shop for far too long, and those needles were a bitch.”

She was feisty. Sexy. The black leather getup molded tightly to her body, showing off angles and curves Rhys hadn’t been able to see when she was sitting down. Her hood had been thrown back. Silky strands of platinum hair crossed her face in the night’s moist breeze, partially hiding the features Rhys wished he could see.

“Now what? You’ll disappear again?” he asked.

“Disappearing is what I do best,” she said.

“Why? Are you hiding from someone?”

“Good thing it wasn’t you. Look how that turned out.”

Rhys grinned, liking her quick-witted comebacks.

“You might want to can the light show if stealth is your objective. Your appearance in the alley was pretty flashy.”

She stared at him with her lips parted for a retort she didn’t make—lush lips nearly as pale as the rest of her. He wondered what those lips would taste like, and if she’d use her knife on him if he tried to find out.

When seconds passed and she hadn’t spoken or made her retreat, Rhys figured those things would have been points for him in the challenge game, if anyone had been keeping score. Then again, she had known about Blood Knights and had pegged him as one with a single glance, so maybe he’d have to concede some of those points.

Finally, when the silence had grown uncomfortable, the provocative white-haired enigma took a backward step, keeping her eyes on him, possibly afraid to turn her back.

“I won’t let this go, you know,” Rhys warned. “You’re far too intriguing.”

“You’ll have to,” she said. “I’m already here and gone.”

“And if I were to ask you to stay?”

The waist-length, silver-white tendrils of her hair had taken on a luminous sheen under the streetlight. Hell, Rhys thought, she looked more like an elf than anything else. Another impulse came to touch her, just to make sure she was real and not a mirage. She hadn’t addressed any of his questions, but didn’t really have to. What had she said? She owed him nothing.

“Ghosts can’t fight. Noncorporeal bodies and all that,” he said, thinking hard about which gene pool she might have sprung from and again coming up short. “But you are very good with a blade.”

“Hate ghosts.” She took another backward step.

“What about Blood Knights? Do you hate them, too?”

“Would you deserve it?”

“You know about us, about who we are. Was that by rumor?”

“Plenty of rumors,” she said.

“If you travel in the kind of company that would spread those rumors, why haven’t I heard about you?”

“Maybe I’m not rumor-worthy.”

“I’m fairly sure no one could forget you after a glimpse. If your soul had been around for a while, someone would have seen you.”

“You’re right,” she agreed. “They wouldn’t have forgotten someone like me, which is why I don’t allow them that glimpse.”

As fun as this was, it was now clear to Rhys that this immortal wasn’t going to volunteer any real information about herself at all, even after sharing in his fight with the vampires. He was going to have to get those details some other way.

Smile widening, he said, “I do love a challenge.”

“Good for you. Now, you must let me go.”

“Or?”

“It will be a regrettable mistake in judgment.”

“Really? When we seem to be on the same side?”

“I value privacy above all other things.”

Rhys nodded. “If you stay in London, I will be able to find you.”

“I didn’t realize Blood Knight was synonymous for bloodhound.”

“Scent has strong power,” Rhys said. “Smells create memories. I can smell the power in you. Though as yet nameless, what you are rolls in my mind like a misplaced vision, sparking images I can’t see clearly. It has to be obvious to you that I need to sort that out.”

“Quite obvious,” she said. “Which is why you followed me in the first place. You’re not sure what I am or who I am. For a Guardian, that kind of void in information would be regrettable.”

“You would be curious in my place, I think.”

The whittled animal-bone handle of the blade that she clenched in her fist was a further sign of her Otherness. Most supernatural species could not touch any kind of metal.

Rhys wondered if she might use that blade on him if he pursued this line of inquiry.

“I watch here, for now,” he said. “I discern friend from foe and try to keep the peace when that task gets harder with each passing year.”

She waved her blade at the dusting of fine gray ash covering the pavement. “Yet, aren’t you and these creatures you call monsters distant cousins? In which case, one might reason that you and your knightly brothers have an obligation to cull their numbers in order to protect the humans these vampires prey upon.”

“More rumors?” Rhys said.

“Aren’t rumors often sparked by truth?”

Before he had time to reply, she closed the distance between them. From only inches away, her scent was much stronger. Her next move was unexpected. She touched him.

No, it was her blade that had touched him. Its sharp tip pierced a coin-sized hole in his coat. Rhys looked down at the knife, then at her. He quirked an eyebrow.

She lowered the blade and placed her cool, bare fingertips on his mouth. Rhys swayed and swallowed a rising groan of surprise. He held his breath as she traced the outline of his lips before gently pressing them back. He knew what she searched for and what she saw hidden there. Fangs.

“It would seem some rumors actually are true,” he said.