Read Archangel's Blade for Free Online Page B

didn’t want to believe she’d changed on such a fundamental level. She wanted to be the girl she’d been before Uram—the one who’d just secured a coveted position at a fashion house, who’d loved fabric and design, and who’d laughed with her girlfriends as they walked to the movies to catch the late show.
    None of those friends had made it.
    Turning to the fridge, he retrieved one of the bags of blood he had delivered on a regular basis and poured it into a glass before going to crouch down beside her. He pushed back a wing of glossy black hair currently streaked with cotton candy–colored highlights and said, “Drink.” Nothing else was necessary—Holly knew he wouldn’t leave until the glass was empty.
    Strange, hate-filled eyes. “I want to kill you. Every time you walk through that door, I want to pick up a machete and hack your head off.” She gulped down the blood and slammed the empty glass on the floor so hard it cracked along one side.
    Using a tissue to wipe her mouth, he threw it in the trash before standing up to lean against a cabinet opposite her. “A woman cut my face today,” he told her. “Not with a machete but a throwing blade.”
    Holly’s eyes skimmed over his unmarked skin. “Bullshit.”
    â€œI’m fairly certain she was going for the jugular but I was too fast.” And Honor had moved with far more grace than he’d have believed her capable of before that little demonstration. The woman was trained in some kind of martial art, trained at a level that meant she was no helpless victim. And yet she had been made one.
    â€œToo bad she missed,” Holly muttered . . . before asking the question that had lingered in the air since the second he walked into the house. “Why won’t you let me die, Dmitri?” Her words were a plea.
    He wasn’t certain why he hadn’t killed her the instant she began to show signs of a lethal change, and so he didn’t answer her. Instead, crouching back down, he tipped up her face with his fingers under her chin. “If it comes down to an execution, Holly,” he murmured, “you’ll never see me coming.” Quick and fast, that was how it would be—he would not have her go into the final goodnight drowning in fear.
    â€œShe died afraid, Dmitri. If only you’d given me what I asked for, she would still be alive.” A sigh, elegant fingers brushing over his cheekbone as he hung broken from iron cuffs that had worn grooves into his skin. “Do you want the same for Misha?”
    â€œDon’t call me that.” Holly’s harsh voice fracturing the crushing memory from the painful dawn of his existence. “Holly died in that warehouse. Some thing else walked out.”
    It was an attempt to erase herself, and that he would not allow—but it would do no harm to permit her to establish a line between her past and the present. Perhaps then, she would finally begin to live this new life. “What would you have me call you?”
    â€œHow about Uram?” A bitter question. “He doesn’t need the name anymore, after all.”
    â€œNo.” He wouldn’t let her harm herself in such a way, her name itself a poisonous shroud. “Choose again.”
    She thumped her fisted hand against his chest, but her anger was permeated with pain and he knew she wouldn’t fight him in this. “Sorrow,” she whispered after a long silence. “Call me Sorrow.”
    No joyful name that, no hopeful one, but he would give her this one choice when she’d had so many others stolen from her. “Sorrow, then.” Leaning forward he pressed his lips to her forehead, her bangs blades of silk against his lips, her bones fine, fragile, so vulnerable under his hands.
    In that instant, he knew why he hadn’t killed her yet. Age notwithstanding, she was a child to him. A dangerous child, but a child