I breathed his name. "Donovan."

He opened his eyes and they were solid black and no longer human. He threw his head back and screamed. The sound was high and piteous. The sound froze my heart in my throat. I had time to think, I've hurt him, and then that pale, perfect body began to thrust into me all over again, as if we hadn't just made love. But before he'd been gentle, careful. There was nothing gentle this time. He plunged into me as hard and fast as he could. He brought me screaming, writhing, underneath him. His hands bruised my wrists, held me in place as his rhythm became frantic, his breathing ragged, and feathers flowed around his body like a nimbus of white light. I had a second to think, Angel, and then all I could see was feathers, brushing me, covering me like a blanket. He cried out again and his body thrust into mine. He brought me one last time, covered in feathers, blinded by them, breathing them in. His hands vanished and I could move my hands, but all I could touch were feathers and bones too delicate to be human. Huge wings beat the air above me, and I could finally see a long graceful neck, the head, the beak. I was trapped at the center of a storm of wingbeats and feathers, as he fought for lift. I covered my face with my arms, because a swan can break the arm of a grown man with one blow. Then he was off, almost hovering, but the ceiling was too low. He crashed to the floor.

I was left buffeted, breathless, heart hammering in my chest. A single feather longer than my hand lay across my stomach. I managed to prop myself up, the feather fluttering down between my legs to land beside the condom that lay discarded on the bed. It had been the only clothes he'd been wearing.

Jean-Claude's voice eased through me. "Je t'aime, ma petite, je t'aime."

"I love you, too," I whispered.

Then dawn came, and I felt him die. Felt that wonderful person I loved go away. I heard the sound of a body hitting the ground. Requiem was a heap of black cloak. One of the guards had managed to catch London and was lowering him to the ground a little more gently. The vampires were dead for the day, all of them. We had hours of daylight to find the Harlequin and kill them. I'm not sure that's what Jean-Claude and the other vampires would have wanted, but the vampires were down for the count until nightfall. It was daylight, and the humans were in charge. Thanks to Jean-Claude I was the top human in our city. Thanks to Richard's self-loathing, the guards would listen to me instead of him. All right, except for the wolves. The wolves were his, but that was okay, I needed professionals, not gifted amateurs. I needed Edward and his backup. At that moment I would have welcomed any backup he thought could handle the job.

Chapter Twenty-eight

I WAS WRONG. I didn't want to welcome Edward's backup. One of them I wanted to send back to his mommy. The other I wanted to put a bullet in his brain, or heart. He was human, so either would do the job.

At least I was dressed for the fight. I never fight as well naked. I would so not have been comfy naked in front of Edward, let alone in front of his "backup." "What the fuck were you thinking?" I shouted at him. Yeah, it was one of those kinds of fights.

Edward's face was blank, empty, peaceful. It was one of the faces he killed with when he wasn't enjoying the kill. "Olaf is good backup for this, Anita. He's got the skills we need: a covert spook, any weapon you care to name, hand-to-hand, and better with explosives than I am."

"He's also a fucking serial killer, whose victims of choice are petite brunette women." I slapped my upper chest. "Sound like anyone you know?"

He let out a breath; if it had been anyone else I would have said he sighed. "He's a good match for this job, Anita, I swear that he is, but he wasn't my choice, not exactly."

I stopped pacing and came to stand in front of him. I'd kicked everyone out except Micah when he handed me the overnight bag full of clothes and weapons. I loved a man who knew how to pack for me. When I'd stepped out into the hallway and seen Olaf and Peter, I'd gone back in the room, kicked Micah out, too, and invited Edward in.

"What does that mean, he wasn't your choice, exactly? You just said his skills match this job."

"They do, but do you really think I'd have brought him within a hundred miles of you, Anita? Olaf likes you, likes you in a way I've never seen him like a woman. He has whores and he has victims, but whatever he feels for you is different."

"Are you saying he loves me?"

"Olaf doesn't love anybody, but he feels something for you."

"He wants me to play serial killer with him, Edward."

Edward nodded. "The last time he saw you, you and he killed a vampire together. You decapitated it, and he cut out its heart."

"How do you know what we did? You were in the hospital trying not to die."

"I heard about it later from the local cops. They were creeped by the way you butchered the vampire. Said you were both real good at cutting up the body."

"I'm a legal vampire executioner, Edward. It's what I do."

He nodded again. "And Olaf has been a special-ops assassin for most of his adult life."

"I don't hold his day job against him, Edward; it's his damn hobby that I don't like."

"Hobby? You call the fact that he's a serial killer his hobby?"

I shrugged. "I think that's how he sees it."

He smiled. "I think you may be right."

"Don't you smile at me. Don't you fucking smile at me. You hinted that you didn't want to bring him on this job, so why did you?"

His face sobered. "He wanted to come to St. Louis to see you"—he put air quotes around the see—"on his own. I told him if he came near you I'd kill him. He believed me, but he said that if I ever got called to back you up again, I had to include him. If I didn't, he'd come on his own, and take his chances with me later."

"Later? Later, after what?"

Edward gave me a look out of those blue eyes that were some of the coldest I ever looked into. "So he's here to what, kill me?"

"He doesn't kill women, Anita. He butchers them."

I shuddered, because I'd seen Olaf at a serial-killer crime scene. Not his own work. He'd been helping Edward and me track down a different killer. But the victim had been just a pile of meat. It had been one of the worst things I'd ever seen done to a human being. Olaf had looked up from that pile of carnage, and the look in his face had been sexual. As if what lay on that table was the biggest turn-on he'd ever had. He'd looked at me, and he'd been thinking sex, yeah, but he'd been thinking sex not just without my clothes, but as if he wondered what I'd look like without my skin. Most humans didn't scare me anymore, but Olaf scared me.

Edward said, "Anita, you look like you've seen a ghost."

"I'd rather see a ghost than him."

He smiled again. "Rather see a ghost; I keep forgetting that you're not just a pretty face."

I frowned at him. "You're smiling. This fight isn't even close to over."

"I had to invite Olaf to play, Anita. This way I have his word that he'll behave himself."

"Define behave himself."

"No serial killing on your turf, period."

"So I'm off the menu, too?"

"He wants to help you slaughter your victim of choice, vampires. He'll even help you kill men, he said."

I shivered, rubbing my arms, squeezing tight so the gun in its shoulder holster dug into my breast a little. I liked the discomfort. I wasn't helpless. It was just that Olaf was six feet plus of trained muscle. I was stronger and faster than a normal human thanks to Jean-Claude's vampire marks, but I still knew enough about physical potential to know that Olaf was a very dangerous man. He was crazy and trained to kill; that seemed an unfair advantage to me.