"Why?"
"You can't see Uram, but Elena can scent him."
Michaela's next words were dismissive. "Riker is watching her, nothing more. And there are other hunters if he loses control." A pause. "She's human, Raphael. She knows nothing of the pleasures I could show you."
Raphael flared out his wings in preparation for flight. "I would have thought Charisemnon would appeal. He was your lover once."
Green eyes met his as he went to the very edge of a balcony made for angels-no railing, nothing to prevent a deadly fall. "But you I've never tasted. I can do things that will make eternity an erotic dream."
"The trouble is, your lovers seem to have very short life spans." He flew down, across the yard, and over the wooded area.
Riker was standing a few feet from Elena, his smile full of menace.
Far from appearing frightened, Elena was flicking a knife through her fingers, her stance that of someone trained in hand-to-hand combat. As she opened her mouth as if to speak, Raphael flew down to land behind Riker, one hand on the vampire's shoulder, the other on his back.
"This is my territory," he said. "Your mistress is a guest." That was all the warning he gave before he thrust his hand through Riker's clothing, flesh, and muscle to grip his panicked heart. A second later, that heart was in Raphael's hand and Riker was twitching facedown on the ground.
"Why?"
He looked up to meet Elena's horrified gaze over the continued pulse of Riker's vampire heart. "There are boundaries. It's better for mortals and immortals alike if those boundaries are not crossed."
Her grip on the knife was white-knuckled. "So you killed him?"
Raphael dropped the heart to the ground and looked at his bloody hand, wondering if Uram had taken his victims' hearts the same way. "He's not dead."
"I-" She swallowed as he approached, took a step back. "I know they can heal a hell of a lot of damage but completely removing the heart?"
"You fear me again." He hadn't seen that look on her face since that first meeting on the roof.
"You just ripped a vampire's heart out with your bare hand." Her voice echoed with shock. "So yes, I fear you."
He looked down at the blood coating his skin. "I wouldn't do this to you, Elena."
"You saying my death will be short and sweet?"
"Perhaps instead of killing you," he said, "I'll make you my slave instead."
"I hope to hell that's your twisted idea of a joke." Biting words, but she put away the knife. "We might as well head back so you can wash off the blood. I've lost the trail anyway."
"He flew?"
"I'm guessing, yes." She folded her arms, nodded toward Michaela's house. "You get the map of her movements?"
"It'll be delivered within the next hour." As they walked, he wondered why a mortal's opinion of him mattered. "Do you plan to walk those streets and see if you can sense him?"
"Yes." She strode forward with determined steps. "If he's as fixated as you guys think-and hell, he is wooing her with bloody hearts-he won't go far from her."
"No, he won't." The bloodborn always killed another angel before devolving completely. In most cases, it was the angel who had been closest to them-a macabre sacrament, as if they were cutting away everything they'd once been.
Elena nodded. "Then we might be able to beard him in his lair while he's sluggish from the amount of blood he took. Unless that's different with you lot?" She glanced at him, her eyes sliding to his bloody hand and forearm before she sucked in a breath and looked away.
"From what we know," he said, hand curling into a fist, "the bloodborn-"
"Bloodborn?" She scowled. "You have a name for whatever it is Uram's become? That means it's not an isolated incident."
"The bloodborn," he said, ignoring her implied question, "are affected as the vampires are by overindulgence. He'll be lazy, sleepy, vulnerable."
Elena's fury at his refusal to answer her question was un-hidden, but whatever it was that she might've said was lost as her cell phone rang. Pulling it out of a pocket, she flipped it open. "Yes." Her eyes turned chaotic. "What?" A pause. "I-" For the first time, he saw her look unsure. "Yes. I'll be there." She closed the phone. "I need to take off for a while. I'll be back by the time Michaela delivers her map."