Page 45 of Archangel’s Lineage

She’d cackled like a hyena.

She used to text him while she was on the road, passing on random pieces of data that she thought he’d enjoy having, despite the fact that they had no useful purpose at all. She still sent him the odd haphazard fact. Their friendship would endure—he knew that—even when she retired from being an active hunter.

But not even with Neve had he experienced this kind of reaction. It was physical, yes, but it was also visceral and internal. Katrina’s voice raked over him like nails scratching his skin in the most delicate places.

“So,” she murmured after a sip of her drink, “you are the vampire who comes into the salon and never goes any further.”

“And you,” he found himself saying, “are the vampire of unknown age and unknown origin who has made an empire out of ennui.”

A smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Are manners not taught in this century?”

Vivek knew she wasn’t talking about his reference to her age. “My job is to spy,” he said, holding that feline gaze. “Can’t help looking. Especially when a vampire as fascinating as you moves into town.”

It might’ve taken him a while to visit the Boudoir, mostly due to medical issues after his transition, but he’d known of Katrina much sooner—because she’d quickly become a power player in the gray underbelly of the city.

Drugs, sex, darker things—they all flowed through the gray.

The slightest flicker in her expression. “Spies don’t usually go about stating their purpose.”

“I’m a different kind of spy,” he said, well aware she already knew his identity—no one rose to Katrina’s level of power without being a dab hand at intelligence gathering themselves. “And tonight, Lady Katrina, I have a request for you.”

An arched eyebrow that told him he was getting above himself.

His skin pulsed, his cock threatening to wake. Oh yeah, he was in trouble. “Not personal,” he said, because while he could spend all night verbally tangling with her, he had a job to do. “In my facility as part of the Tower team.”

A lack of motion in her face as she took him in.

He didn’t blame her for thinking him full of shit. He was sure that hundreds of people of all descriptions tried to get close to her, if not for her sensuality, then for her power. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out one of the gold-on-black cards that Aodhan had hand painted for him.

“A bit flashy for my job description,” Vivek had said, even as he held the cards close with covetous pride. Only a hundred cards. Each one worth a ridiculous amount of money because each was a piece of original art by Aodhan.

“These are not everyday cards.” Aodhan had given him one of those rare smiles that he gave only friends—and yeah, Vivek felt good that he’d gained that status.

Because he and Aodhan? They had things in common no one else could truly understand. Vivek’s whole weirdness about touch? Aodhan got it as no other person he’d met ever had—or could.

“These,” the angel formed of pieces of refracted light had said, “are cards you give to the most arrogant and most powerful... to make the point that you, too, are very arrogant and even more powerful.”

Vivek knew Elena groaned at the political games played by immortals, but he found those complex games enthralling. Like the most intricate and multilayered board game on the planet.

“My credentials,” he said, offering the card to her in the way he’d been taught was polite among the old immortals: held flat on the palm of one hand so that the face was visible.

Another long moment of eye contact before she glanced down.

She sucked in the slightest breath before she put her drink on the bar to pick up the card with extreme care, making sure not to touch the surface at all. When she looked up, her eyes held a glint far more dangerous than her sensuality, a glimpse of the predator under the skin of beauty and sex.

“Come, then, Vivek Kapur of the Tower, let us talk.” She made his name a purr of sound... if that purr was a razor designed to stripe him with bleeding wounds.

It was Vivek’s turn to throw back his drink, a shot of liquid courage before he followed his beautiful doom out of the salon and into a long, dark corridor. She glanced back at one point, saw the cane and the way his leg dragged.

She was a predator. He braced himself for a cutting comment.

Instead, she paused so he could catch up, then walked with him. Her scent brushed his senses as they moved, twining around him in bonds luscious and intoxicating. Fuck. Why had Elena never warned him that being hunter-born meant they couldn’t only track vampires by scent, but that they were more susceptible to those same scents?

Unless this wasn’t about his abilities... but about his response to Katrina.

“Your pulse is a beacon.” She stared at the spot on his neck where his pulse no doubt jumped. “If you are to survive in our world, Vivek Kapur, you need to learn not to turn yourself into a buffet invitation.”

Vivek was fairly certain he wouldn’t mind being her buffet.

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