by K. M. Scott
Scraping her nails across his shoulders, she drew blood that dripped down his chest, igniting his desire for what all vampires craved during sex. Theron dipped his head to taste the soft skin of her neck, and then his fangs snapped into his mouth with a vicious click.
She lifted her head for a moment and looked at them with wonder. She’d never been with a vampire before, and now he’d show her what he could do to her.
Slowly, he ran his tongue over his fangs and smiled. “Let’s see if I can make you feel like you’re flying too.”
Lowering his head to her neck, he grazed the tips of his teeth against her skin and then savagely bit down, sinking into her body as he continued to fuck her hard. Blood rushed into his mouth, and immediately he knew the blood of a goddess was like nothing he’d ever experienced before. Instantly, he became lightheaded, slowing his thrusting into her perfect cunt for a moment as he gained his bearings.
Her blood was immediately addictive, and he felt it rush through his veins. It made him invincible, like nothing in the world could defeat him. He’d thought biting her would give her an incredible sensation, but he hadn’t anticipated how her blood would affect him.
Nyx held his mouth to her neck and came hard on his cock while he continued to pull from her vein. The feel of her cunt milking him through her release sent him over the edge, and with one last plunge into her, he came inside her as he sucked her immortal blood into him.
They said nothing for what felt like hours as he held her in his arms, his cock still inside her and his mouth still drawing her blood into him. With any other female, he would have drained her by drinking so ferociously, but finally, Nyx lifted her head and smiled.
“That was out of this world. Now let me give you something in return. I’ll help you defeat Hades, Theron.”
“How can you help?” he asked, barely able to form the question through the haze of what her blood did to him.
“I live in the Underworld. I have my ways.”
He didn’t care to ask any more about how she’d help. At that moment, he didn’t give a damn about Hades, the Archons, the Sons, the war, or anything else in the world.
All he cared about was her.
Chapter Fifteen
The buzz of Sion’s drones flying overhead signaled to Vasilije the time had come for their final push. The dragons waited high in the hills, while Terek stood with Dante and his clyten forces on the plains waiting for the battle cry to let them know to attack. In the distance, daemons waited, as exhausted as the Sons and their allies from the battle that had dragged on into its third night. Vasilije suspected even they prayed for it to end tonight, one way or another.
As for him, he intended to do everything in his power to make that happen. So far, their side had held while the Archons’ allies had found fighting vampires and dragons hard enough, but when Sion’s drones arrived to attack them relentlessly from the sky, it all became too much for them. They’d fallen back to a safe position that morning, and while Dante wanted to attack with his clytens and the dragons to end them once and for all, everyone needed a rest, so the battle was put on hold until sundown.
The last hint of the sun’s rays had fallen below the horizon just seconds ago, and as expected, Sion released his drones right on schedule to begin the attack on Hades’ daemons. They filled the sky like a plague descending from the heavens, and the buzzing noise they made drowned out every other sound around them.
The Sons and their allies had funneled the daemons into this valley between two mountains just east of the dragons’ home. For three nights, they’d fought them with every means possible, but as tired as he knew the daemons must be, they continued to throw themselves at them. The first night, Vasilije himself knew hundreds had died at his hands alone, and Terek had slayed over twice as many since he was far more experienced in battle. The clytens had taken over the next morning and killed even more, yet that night Vasilije could have sworn there were as many as the night before.
They just seemed to keep coming, like Hades had an infinite number of daemons to sacrifice. The problem was the Sons and their allies didn’t have that many troops on their side. Some vampires from the population around the dragons’ castle had joined up when they heard they were fighting the Archons, but that left them with less than half of what the other side had to fight with.
Sion’s drones had turned the tide of the battle on the second night, though, and now as Vasilije looked out across the valley, he saw fewer daemons than the night before. He could only hope that with their relentless harassment from the air combined with the vampires and dragons on the ground, the battle could finally be won tonight.
He dreaded the idea of it stretching into a fourth day and night. While Sion had more than enough machines to send into the air, the Sons and their allies were beginning to get worn down. One more night might mean the end of them.
From across the plain, Terek held up his sword and Dante yelled out the cry for the battle to begin. Behind them, the dragons screeched into the night sky, each Draco brother shifting into their true form, their magnificent colored scales shining in the moonlight as they hovered above the nearby hills and prepared to swoop down on the daemons as they attacked.
The sound coming from the opposite side of the plain was nothing less than horrifying. Hades’ daemons made a high-pitched shrieking noise when they attacked, and now as they began to rush toward the ground Vasilije and the rest of the vampires held, the sound became deafening, even drowning out the drones.
He took one last look down the line of his kind as they raced toward what would be the end for far too many of them and focused his rage on the enemy. They appeared and disappeared constantly, but that trick didn’t work as well as it had the first night. Now they knew that whenever a daemon prepared to blink out, they had to gather their strength first. It seemed disappearing wasn’t something easy for them, and they expended a great deal of energy doing it. Thankfully, Terek noticed that little tell in the first hours of the battle, and since then, the Sons and their allies knew to watch the daemons carefully. If they suddenly fell still, even for a few moments, they were about to disappear and that was the perfect time to get them.
The noise of the battle fell away as Vasilije’s heartbeat pounded in his ears, and now as he ripped the head off one of the enemy, he heard nothing of its screams of pain or any of the other deafening sounds in the air around him. At his left side, a vampire hacked a daemon to pieces, but on his right, Vasilije saw one of his fellow fighters suffer as a daemon placed its hands on his skin. One touch and a vampire instantly felt intense pain take over their entire body. He sliced the daemon’s head off, but it wasn’t enough to save the vampire, who fell to the ground writhing in pain.
Kneeling at his side, Vasilije saw his mouth open when he let out the final scream of agony before he died. He deserved a hero’s death, not some second-rate death at the hands of Hades’ scum, so Vasilije ripped his stake from his belt and drove it into his heart.
“Rest in peace, warrior,” he said quietly as the vampire turned to dust there on the battlefield where he’d willingly chosen to help the Sons.
There was no time to mourn him and the hundreds others who would die that night, so the Romanian pushed ahead, determined to kill as many daemons as he could. In the distance, he saw Terek slice and dice dozens of the enemy with precision. He always did have a way of pushing down that whole spiritual side of him when it came to battle.
Dante grabbed a hold of a drone, along with twenty or so of his clyten regiment, and they flew above the enemies’ line to come at the daemons from behind. He’d explained his plan to do just that before the rest of the vampires fell asleep that morning, and for his part, Vasilije had made the mistake of doubting he’d actually go through with it. He should have known the clyten better. A stunt like that was just his style.
But as long as it helped them defeat the daemons, he didn’t care what tricks Dante wanted to try.
As all of this marched th
rough his mind, he saw a daemon rush toward him, its arms extended and its hands aiming for him. “Not tonight, motherfucker. I don’t plan to go to the Underworld because of one of you bastards!” he yelled as he dodged its attempt to grab him and then spun around to bury his knife into its head.
Blood spurted everywhere, covering him with daemon ooze, but thankfully, their innards didn’t have the same effect as their outsides. Vasilije spit to get rid of blood that landed on his mouth, disgusted by the very idea of having anything of theirs on him.
And so it went for hours through the night. At one point, he heard the cry of the fire dragon, Kerik, and saw him as a band of daemons attacked him. He held out for what seemed like forever, but the pain they could inflict even penetrated the dragon’s hard scaly shell. In a sight that made Vasilije turn away in sadness afterward, he watched the mighty leader of the dragons collapse to the ground and then just before he died, a puff of smoke exited his body before he fell still.
The battle eventually turned in the Sons’ favor, but as they killed the last of Hades’ daemons and left their discarded bodies on the battlefield, they couldn’t say it had been an overwhelming success. The air dragon, Victor, lay mortally wounded and his brothers cried out in pain to see they’d lost nearly half their family. The clyten regiment suffered huge losses, but even as Dante walked the field to give each of them the proper death they’d earned, he had to admit it would have been worse without the drones.
“They were the trick,” he admitted sadly before staking yet another of his troops.
Terek nodded, but his sadness over the loss of life he saw all around him made him sigh. “I don’t know if the Archons will be able to convince Hades to send more of his daemons to slaughter, but I don’t know if we have much more left on our side either.”
Even Dante, who had never shied away from any fight as long as Vasilije had known him, had to agree. “I called for Theron a few minutes ago. This can’t go on. He’s going to have to come up with another plan because this one has run its course. My clyten troops can’t go through another battle like this.”
Looking across the land at the hundreds of dead, Terek said, “None of us can. Theron will have to understand that.”
Just as he said that, the leader of the Sons of Navarus appeared beside them and nodded his agreement, surprising all of them. Theron had been nothing less than hell-bent on war, so his change now seemed odd.
“I agree, Terek. The time for battle between the two sides is over. Now we need more surgical strikes.”
“Surgical?” Vasilije asked, unsure what he meant. “As in what?”
“I just came from the Orders’ headquarters. I’ve known all along that at some point we’d have to stop fighting all these allies of the Archons and Hades and instead just fight them. Saint and Solenne have a right to go after that Archon that raped her. Sion and Kali have their own wrongs to avenge with her sire, who’s working with the Archons. So they’ll be heading to Corsica. Your job is done, gentlemen.”
Vasilije looked over at Terek and Dante and saw the shock in their expressions. “Done? You think sending one Son and his mate to handle the Archons at their headquarters, which is likely one big trap, a good idea? Why not send us to fight with them?”
“Because they deserve to do this on their own, especially Saint and Solenne. As for Archon headquarters being a trap, I’ll be with them to clear the place out so they can focus on their targets.”
“What if Hades sends more daemons? What then?” Dante asked.
Theron smiled. “He’s not. He didn’t want to in the first place, but because he agreed to come in on the side of the Archons, he had to send some after our side defeated the witches down in Italy. He has no interest in sending more of his troops to be killed.”
Still unconvinced, Dante asked, “How do you know this? I get you have all those great powers and things, but are you now able to read a god’s mind too?”
Vasilije watched as Theron’s smile changed to one he knew all too well. He had no idea what the vampire had been up to, but it hadn’t all been battling the enemy.
“We have a spy in the enemy camp. A daemon my parents have been using to get me messages for the past two nights. She assures me Hades is done with this war.”
“Your parents?” Terek repeated with surprise. “Noele and Ramiel?”
Theron nodded. “It seems ever since my mother got to the Underworld, she’s been working to help us up here. When my father joined her, they began sending me messages to let me know what Hades is up to. Trust me. He’s done with the war. He’s too busy planning for his next fight with me.”
“So the war is over,” Dante said with restrained hope in his voice.
“It will be once Saint and Solenne take care of that Archon and Sion and Kali do what they need to with her sire.”
“And what about you?” Vasilije asked, still curious about what their young leader had been up to lately.
With a casual shrug of his shoulders, Theron answered, “Well, either I defeat Hades and take over control of the Underworld and the vampire world like the prophecy says, or he defeats me and puts me in his cellar down there. Those are the only two choices. Either way, some of you will be happy and others will be disappointed, if I’m reading your thoughts correctly.”
Opening his mouth, Vasilije began to ask what that meant, but suddenly terror struck at his heart. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
Something was wrong with Sasa. She was in danger.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s wrong, Vasilije?” Terek asked with fear hanging off every word he spoke.
“Sasa. She’s in danger. I have to go.”
“I’ll come with you.”
He didn’t argue with his friend and focused on the castle before disappearing. But instead of going to the room where he’d left her, Vasilije found himself outside the castle. Terek joined him a second later, clearly as confused as he was why they hadn’t appeared inside.
“There’s only one reason why,” he explained as Vasilije began running toward the front door. “Only another vampire could stop us from entering that way.”
The front door of the castle didn’t budge when he pushed on it, so he called out to Sasa to let her know he’d sensed her danger. “I’m here, Sasa! Hang on. I’m coming!”
He and Terek slammed their bodies against the door, but still it didn’t move an inch. With each passing moment, Vasilije grew more and more worried about his vampire’s safety. She should have been fine since Navar stayed behind with her, Ilona, and Leta, but he’d felt her fear as surely as he’d been next to her at that moment.
“This isn’t working,” he said in frustration after the fifth time they tried to bust down the door. “It’s too heavy.”
“I’ll call Dante and tell him to bring some of his troops. We have to get in there. Something’s very wrong. I can sense Ilona’s terrified. I just don’t know why.”
Vasilije scanned the castle walls for another way in. “Same with Sasa. I hope I’m mistaken, but something feels very wrong. I need to get to her now!”
Just then, he saw a window above their heads about twenty feet to the right of the doorway. He tried to materialize on the ledge, but he couldn’t do it. Something was making his powers ineffective.
Pointing up at the window, he said, “I can’t get up there on my own. Something’s wrong. If you can hoist me up, I should be able to reach it.”
The two hurried over to under the window and Terek lifted Vasilije up on his shoulders so he was standing on them. But they weren’t tall enough.
“Let me call Dante.”
Vasilije didn’t want to wait for more help. If he could jump, he could probably grab the stone ledge and then pull himself up. He just hoped the window wasn’t tempered glass or all of their acrobatics might be for nothing.
“No! I’m going to jump to the ledge. Stand still.”
As Sasa’s terror grew inside him, Vasilije leaped off Terek’s shoulders an
d stretched his arms out to grab onto the ledge. He barely reached, but after securing his hold on the stone, he pulled himself up. Set back about three feet, the window sat in an alcove that barely held him. With as much power as he could muster, he threw himself at the glass two times but it refused to break.
He needed to get in there. If his body wouldn’t do the job, maybe his foot would. Lifting his leg, he thrust his boot into the window and shattered it. A few seconds later, he crawled through and saw the window was on the stairs up to the second floor.
Terek called out his name, but at that moment, Sasa screamed, so Vasilije forgot about his friend and tore up the stone steps toward her voice. A body lying on a step near the top stopped him dead, and he looked down to see the youngest Draco brother Navar splayed out dead and surrounded in blood, his throat slit from ear to ear.
Who had done this?
He raced up the last few stairs and down the hall toward Sasa’s room, calling out for his mate. “Sasa! Where are you? I’m here, Sasa. I’m here!”
All the while, images of her hurt and in pain tore through his brain. What had happened in this place?
Outside the room next to hers, Vasilije saw a body and the telltale blond hair of Ilona. Like Navar, her throat had been slit and she’d bled out. Leta lay on the floor just inside their bedroom unconscious, but she hadn’t been hurt in any obvious way.
As much as he wanted to stop to help, he sensed Sasa might suffer the same fate as Ilona and Nevar if he didn’t reach her, so he yelled for Terek to come and ran toward Sasa’s room. He still sensed her, and that meant she wasn’t dead yet.
Throwing open the wooden door, he stopped dead, stunned by the scene in front of him. Sasa stood crying, and behind her, Nico had his arm wrapped around her and in his other hand a knife he held to her throat.
“What is this, Nico? Let her go,” he said in his calmest voice, hoping not to scare Sasa.