Archangel's Shadows by Nalini Singh Page A

drank from her neck.
    Another male vamp had his fangs buried in her inner thigh.
    Ashwini had known she was wasting her time, but she’d made them stop, then waited until the woman was conscious. At which point the junkie had called Ash a bitch who needed to get fucked. Then she’d spread her legs lewdly to reveal she wore no panties, and shoved one of the vampires down between her thighs, telling him to feed. Her eyes had rolled back in her head an instant later, orgasmic cries torn out of her throat.
    A week later, Ashwini had seen the same woman’s face in a Guild bulletin. She’d been found drained of blood, fanged all to hell. Saddened but unsurprised, Ashwini had told the hunter on the case about the vamps she’d seen with the victim. Turned out the two had been in San Francisco at the time, the junkie killed by another of her customers.
    That was only the tip of the iceberg.
    Certain parts of the Vampire Quarter were a meat market—for blood, for sex, for pain. Not all of it in the dives. Two of the most dangerous Quarter clubs were also the most sophisticated and exclusive, catering to a highly select clientele. Old,
old
vampires who no longer liked anything vanilla.
    The Guild did its best to keep an eye on things, but the hunters weren’t anyone’s big brother, and if the meat walked in and wanted to be eaten, it wasn’t anyone’s business but that of the adults involved.
    Minors were a whole other story.
    Ashwini’s skin pebbled at the memory of the report that had been part of the file she’d been given when she entered the Academy at sixteen—the Guild had a policy of making sure all its students were fully aware of the world in which they’d be moving should they complete their training.
    The younger students received redacted data, what their minds could handle at the time, with more to follow as they grew. Older entrants, in contrast, were given the hard facts with both barrels from the word go. In that never-forgotten case, the vampire in question had been sent to a special prison for near-immortals and sentenced to have his skin flayed off once every fourteen days, no anesthetic, the tool to be a whip or a scalpel.
    Apparently, he had to choose which tool was used each and every time. If that wasn’t terrifying enough, once every month, the jailors cut off his tongue and genitals in specific punishment for the fact he’d preyed on children. The timing was calculated to be precisely long enough for everything to grow back, given his age, and for him to have two days of perfect health.
    Forty-eight hours in which to dread what is to come,
Janvier had said to her once while they’d been discussing punishment in the realm of immortals and almost-immortals.
It’s a stupid man indeed who seeks to break a law when the penalty is in Dmitri’s hands.
    Parole wasn’t even a possibility until the vampire had served a hundred years.
    As far as Ashwini was concerned, it was the perfect goddamn punishment. The vamp had been fucking and sucking from a thirteen-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl, both of whom had been raised in his household, the children of servants. Instead of protecting the innocents who’d looked up to him, he’d used their trust and that of their parents to systemically abuse.
    He’d even groomed his victims to the point that they believed the abuse to be a normal part of life.
    The two children had been damaged on such a deep level, Ashwini knew the prognosis for their future psychological health had been bleak at best. She’d heard rumors that it was one of the rare times Raphael had personally involved himself in the lives of mortals—this was long before Elena became his consort.
    According to the rumor mill, he’d done something to the children’s minds that allowed them to heal. Ashwini had always hoped the rumor was true, that the kids had made it, were living safe and happy lives as the adults they’d now be . . . and that no other monster had invaded their