A Dark Kiss of Rapture by Sylvia Day Page A

.
     
    SENTINELS —an elite special ops unit of
the seraphim , tasked with enforcing the punishment of the Watchers .
     
    SERAPH —singular of seraphim .
     
    SERAPHIM —the highest rank of angel in
the angelic hierarchy.
     
    VAMPIRES —a term that encompasses both
the Fallen and their minions .
     
    WATCHERS —two hundred seraphim angels sent to earth at the beginning of time to observe mortals.
They violated the laws by taking mortals as mates and were punished
with an eternity on earth as vampires with no possibility of
forgiveness.

Go tell the Watchers of heaven, who have
deserted the lofty sky, and their holy everlasting station, who
have been polluted with women, and have done as the sons of men do,
by taking to themselves wives, and who have been greatly corrupted
on the earth; that on the earth they shall never obtain peace and
remission of sin. For they shall not rejoice in their offspring;
they shall behold the slaughter of their beloved; shall lament for
the destruction of their sons; and shall petition for ever; but
shall not obtain mercy and peace.
    The Book of Enoch 12:5–7

CHAPTER 1
     
    Raze’s night had been going pretty well,
until the woman he’d just spent four hours fucking stumbled across
a naked, disemboweled body on his doorstep. Her scream had
shattered the serenity of the predawn, forcing him to knock her out
before she drew a crowd. Now, as the sun stretched sleepy tendrils
of light over the horizon, he stood over the corpse and struggled
to contain his roiling fury.
    “Dumped on my goddamn porch like trash.” He
ran both hands over his shaved head. “Poor bastard.”
    “Guesstimate of the time your gift arrived?”
Vashti asked, her stiletto-heeled boots tapping out an impatient
staccato as she paced. Her crimson hair swayed around her shoulder
blades, the vividly-hued tresses the only wash of color against her
skintight, all-black jumpsuit. She was a comic book aficionado’s
wet dream, with her lush tits and ass offset by a fallen angel’s
incomparable beauty. Her appearance was as lethal as the twin
katanas she often wore in crisscrossing sheaths on her back, her
physical beauty another weapon in the arsenal she used as
second-in-command of the entire vampire nation.
    “Hell if I know,” he bit out. “There was
nothing out of place when I got home at midnight. He was found at
four.”
    “You didn’t hear anything? Nothing at
all?”
    Raze scowled. He had a squeaky board on his
front porch and everyone knew it. Even if they ruled out the
benefit of his vampire hearing, his powerful sense of smell should
have picked up on the freshly spilled blood. “No. Christ. If I’d
heard anything I would have caught the fuckers.”
    Damned if he’d tell her that it hadn’t been
possible to hear anything over the woman moaning beneath him and
the steady banging of his headboard against the wall as he pounded
into her. The smell of hot sex, dripping sweat, and semen
filled-latex had saturated the air along with the scent of the
blood he’d drunk from her—a lover whose name he couldn’t remember
now. It shamed him that the broken body on his doorstop had been
lost among the sexual excess.
    He stared at his name carved into the
corpse’s left biceps and the cattle-branded monogram he recognized
as the mark of a vampire known as Grimm. A growl rumbled up from
his chest. Even without the mutilation, the victim was Raze’s now.
He would stand for the man and the vengeance due him. “I almost
wish Grimm was still alive so I could kill him again.”
    “You’ve got enough on your plate dealing
with his minions,” Syre said, entering the room soundlessly.
    Despite the hour, the vampire leader looked
flawless. Even in casual dark jeans and a plain T-shirt, there was
an elegance to him that was regal and commanding. Raze would brave
the pits of hell for Syre if he commanded it. They’d come to earth
together, fallen together, lost their wings together. Two hundred
of them. And there