Be careful? Of what? Every conversation I’d had with Diana Blackmoor had been strange. She was strange. Like she’d stated herself, she didn’t understand this world. She hadn’t lived here long enough to know Rose and trust her.
Without us, the prophecy could never be fulfilled. We could never be human and free from the visions that plagued us. We could never have sons. Never have a normal life.
I’d heard whispers of others who had refused to participate in the joinings, but none who’d held out as long as myself. Rose and the all the elders maintained we couldn’t have children with supernaturals—except a Lamassu, which is why we were kept hidden from Xerxes…but if Diana thought there was more going on than Rose let on… plus, there was my vision, what else was Rose hiding? Or lying about?
All other thoughts of Rose’s possible deception were erased. My hope—my belief— smothered my doubts about the prophecy. I would be free one day, and I would have a real relationship outside of these stone walls. The prophecy could go on without me.
I walked down one of the aisles, letting my fingertips run along the edge of the books, finally stopping on one oversized old volume I didn’t remember ever looking at. The cover was worn fabric and the lettering, like most older books, was embossed with gold leaf. Fancy script and swirls decorated the front and spine. I traced the title—Legends of Arthur and Avalon.
King Arthur? I’d read stories about his knights and the round table of Camelot. They were adventurous stories of love and devotion. The knights fought bravely for their king and defended their land from invaders.
I walked back to the favored loveseat and curled into the cushions on one side, opening the large book. The paper was yellow with age, but in good shape. It didn’t flake as I turned the first page. The musty smell of history hit my nose, and I breathed in deeply, reading the opening line. In the year of our Lord, five hundred thirty-nine, Arthur Pendragon fought and died for his kingdom. But the end of his story was merely the beginning of another…
The chapter went on to describe how magick was used in the many successful battles Arthur fought and then how magick left his side before he died. His knights took his fallen body from the battlefield and disappeared from the world into a fortress called Avalon, a fortress no man could find again after leaving.
A smile curved my lips. Sounded familiar to me. No mortal man ever remembered seeing this castle, either.
Chapter 7
XERXES
“Yes, General,” Cal said, entering the Oval Office.
“To the lab,” I said, walking toward him from behind the desk. He touched my shoulder and hurtled us into the vortex of space the Djinn used to teleport from place to place.
We materialized again in the new lab I’d set up inside the building formerly known as the Pentagon. Each level had been spelled by witches along with a twist of my own magick to allow only permitted personnel through the shields. Not even that fucking siren, Calliope, would be able to stroll through and take my people unaware again.
I’d made few mistakes over the course of my lifetime, but leaving the mansion at Whitemarsh without wards had been a costly one. Losing the Kitsune Riza and Sochi, and the baby Sochi carried in her womb, had enormously slowed my overall timeline. It would be a decade and a half before Lila, Sochi’s first child, was able to bear a child of her own.
And today was the day we would harvest the last usable blood sample from her.
I left Cal in the main hallway and continued through the maze of doors and magickal barriers to the rooms set aside for Lila and her nurses. The pleased giggle of a baby’s laugh greeted my ears once I passed through the very last barrier—soundproofed even to a supernatural level. I opened the door and stepped into the pale room filled with a few brightly colored blankets, toys, and a swing. Things her nurses insisted the baby needed for proper development.
I raised my hand, using my magick to lift Lila from where she lay on a blanket in front of a nurse. The woman was silent and bowed prostrate on the floor. The baby, however, continued to giggle. The corners of my mouth turned up, mirroring the tiny grin on her face. Her eyes sparkled with life and joy, completely unaware of how scared she should be and of what some might call a terrible situation. I was, after all, considered a monster.
And I was.
But I could still take care of a baby, especially one that would be very valuable to me in the future. She was provided with anything the nurses requested and now had four nurses who rotated in shifts around the clock to care for her. She was never alone.
Her brown eyes reminded me of the child I’d lost. The one stolen from me, who’d put everything that’d happened over the last four thousand years into motion. I’d simply been a man in love with a woman, excited to start a family. We’d known it was forbidden—love between a Lamassu and a Sister of House Lamidae—but it hadn’t stopped us. Our baby had been beautiful. Perfect.
And then it wasn’t. My family betrayed me, and I vowed to make them all pay for what they’d stolen, and I had, except for Naram and Rose. They evaded the massacre and took the Sister’s with them. Rose had killed the woman I loved and my child. In return, I’d taken her husband and made it look like I’d killed him. For four thousand years, she’d had to live with the belief and that I’d killed my brother.
I’d given her the option to let me have Cera and the baby, but she’d stabbed them through the heart with a Dragonfire blade, telling me what I wanted was impossible, that I would ruin the entire prophecy by taking Cera away from the rest of the Sisters.
Fuck the prophecy.
I traced a fingertip along Lila’s chubby cheek. “You are the only being on the planet that does not fear me. Yet.” There would come a day. I knew it was inevitable. I’d lost whatever conscience I possessed along the way to seek revenge against my people. Against Rose. Against my brother. Though I hadn’t killed him, he’d practically been reduced to a beast over the course of the passing millennia.
This baby would fear me, too. The whole Earth would one day tremble at just the mention of my name. Once the Earth bowed to me, it would be time to return to the Veil and take the thrones away from the Drakonae. Lamassu had reigned from the great stone thrones of Orin since the dawn of time, and history would repeat itself. I would make sure of it.
“Take her to the lab for the final procedure.” I floated the baby across the room and placed her gently on the floor in front of her prostrate nurse.
“Yes, Master.”
I left the makeshift nursery and rejoined Cal in the main hall.
“General?” His tone even and slow, waiting for direction.
“The tomb.”
Cal bowed then extended a hand.
I took it, and we jumped. A second later, we were inside a tomb beneath what had been the most powerful city on the face of the Earth. Babylon had fallen when I betrayed my kind to the Horde, but it’d taken many secrets with it.
Chains rustled in the back of the shadow-filled room. No natural light had touched the stones surrounding me since they’d been fit together thousands of years ago. I slipped a flashlight from my pocket and clicked the button on the handle. A beam of bright light flooded the massive room. This tomb held the bodies of many kings.
It also held my brother.
A huff of air stirred the room, and I cast the light in the direction of the sound.
“Kill me, brother.” His voice rasped, filled with pain and void of any hope.
It was rare that I saw him in anything other than his Lamassu form. Today was no different—not that it mattered. His white eyes still glowed with the same hatred they’d had since the day I’d informed him that I’d ripped out his wife’s heart with my claws and eaten it while she took her last breath at my feet.
Naram’s lion-like claws clicked on the stone floor with each limping step across the room. His body had been the size of a 747 jumbo jet when I first locked him down here in this massive cavern. He hadn’t even been able to unfold his eagle-like wings com
pletely.
Now with his magick and essence waning from near-starvation, his shifted form had lessened.
Less power. Less Lamassu.
When he stepped into the beam of light, I saw a wretched beast barely the size of a horse. His wings drooped at his sides, dragging the ground. Wings that used to span the entire breadth of the ancient temple.
“Kill me,” he repeated. His human-lion head rose to face me straight on. Every muscle in his body strained and shook with effort.
“I came to feed you. Your time is close, brother, but is not here yet,” I answered, speaking in the ancient tongue of the Babylonians with the same ease as I had four thousand years ago.
He shifted in front of me, morphing within seconds from the bedraggled beast to a weak, useless, dirty man. His shirt barely held together at the seams. Long ratted filthy hair hid part of his face. Pale skin gleamed in the illuminated light, and his hollow eyes had sunken so far into his face he reminded me of a mummified corpse.
“Kill me. You allowed every other of our kind to rest.” The chains on his wrists and ankles clanked with each hobbled step he took toward me.
“You know why you’re here, Naram.”
He leaned against one of the massive pillars holding up the room and slid down it to the floor with a sigh. “She’s dead because of you, not because of anything I did and you know it.”
“Lies! You and Rose took her from me.” I hissed. They’d killed Cera and my child, taken her in the night and stabbed her in the heart. The dragon fire weapon had been in Rose’s hand when I entered the room, fresh blood still dripping from the blade. “Leave the bag.” I turned to Cal, and he immediately dropped the canvas backpack to the floor with a thud and stepped toward me.
“She killed herself and the baby. You raped Cera.” Even in his weakened state, his voice thundered through the enormous room, anger and something else—pity—laced his voice. “You ruin all you touch, brother.”
“I suppose Earth’s ruin is imminent then. Everything you thought I would accomplish has come true, brother. I will soon be the monster you feared all those years ago.”
“If you had the Sisters, Xerxes, you’d never waste time taunting me again. So someone has them, and they are protecting them. You’ll never get back to Orin.” He sucked in a haggard breath and closed his bright white eyes to the beam of my flashlight.
“Rose’s bitches are not the only way to the Veil.” Fuck.
Naram chuckled, actually laughed, a hollow pathetic sound that echoed through the room and my soul.
Exasperation clawed at my chest like an annoying child begging to be picked up.
Then his gaze changed, suddenly becoming more focused. “You didn’t kill her. Did you? You sick son of a whore. All this time, she’s been evading you. That’s my girl.” His tone had switched from anguished to a strong sneer of defiance.
“Rose will see you again, brother, at least the pieces I choose to send.” Once Rose and Naram were dead, I would be the only Lamassu left alive, and I would be unstoppable.
Dragons. Gryphons. Phoenix. It didn’t matter in the least. I’d pick them off one by one until they were alone and running for cover. Without Rose at their side, they would be nothing. She was the strategist behind everything they’d done, every plan of mine they’d thwarted.
Soon, nothing they did would matter.
Each day my army grew. Each day they showed the humans who was superior. Soon humans would hide in the shadows and the Earth would be ours.
Once I’d accomplished a pandemic of terror, I’d take Earth.
Then I’d take the Veil. That damn fucking dagger was in Sanctuary. It was the only place it could be hiding from the spell my witches continually cast to locate it. Rose had the Sisters and my key, but not for much longer.
“You will fail, brother. She will find a way—”
I kicked the canvas bag full of bread and dried meat toward him before squaring my shoulders. It didn’t matter what he thought, what he said. “I’m the one taking over the world one country at a time, Naram. You’re the one slowly wishing for death beneath a city that’s been extinct for thousands of years.”
“Thousands?” His eyebrows raised in surprise before his head dropped low. “I knew it’d been a long time. But—”
“Over four thousand years,” I scoffed. “And your stupid prophecy still hasn’t been fulfilled.”
He glanced up at me again and snarled, but didn’t speak. The expression he wore screamed his frustration.
A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. “It shouldn’t be taking this long…should it? What do you know that Rose doesn’t?”
No answer. Naram turned and walked away from me, disappearing into the shadows again.
“What do you know?” I asked again.
“Kill me or leave me alone.
Anger burned inside my chest. I could stand there and yell at him. Beat him. Threaten him. It wouldn’t make the slightest difference. Whatever piece of the puzzle Naram was keeping to himself would go with him to his grave. He’d never tell me.
Some things never changed. I’d won all those years ago. I’d taken everything from him, and yet there were still things my brother carried that I could never know. Things apparently even his fucking wife didn’t know.
Chapter 8
ALEK
Rose’s Cafe was extra busy today. The scent of sugar and cinnamon filled the air like a cloud. The Brownies had put their famous sticky buns back on the menu, and Sanctuary’s pregnant mothers were flocking to the booths. Eira, Sanctuary’s freshest vampire Protector, sat with Diana Blackmoor, both their bellies swollen with child. Their mates walked through the door a moment later, ringing the little brass bell wildly. The two Drakonae and the Elvin slid into the seats next to their respective mates, laughing and joking with each other about never getting to taste one of the elusive sticky-buns.
It is just a bit of fucking bread. Who really gives a shit? A pang of jealousy spun a web across my heart, tugging hard until I forced my gaze away from them. I didn’t really begrudge them bread. What really hurt was knowing that I’d never partake of the sacred gift they’d been given—fatherhood. That I’d never have a mate-bond like my parents had shared. That I didn’t even fully know what it meant to be a Gryphon.
My friendship with the Blackmoor Drakonae brothers spanned thousands of years, but since they’d recovered their mate Diana, Jared and I both had pulled away. At least Jared had a sliver of hope for a mate, since the Djinn woman from Savannah had lived through touching his flame.
I, Alek Melos, was the only Gryphon on Earth. No hope for me. There had been several dozen of us in the beginning when we’d first come through from Veil, but once we’d split up, that’d been it. I never saw any of them again. Not once throughout all the thousands of years I’d lived in this world.
For the longest time, I’d believed the Sisters of Lamidae were the key to getting back home, to finding out if any of my people had survived the fire of the Incanti. Maybe I would find a mate one day if ever I was able to return. Maybe someone there still knew what it meant to be a Gryphon.
But that dream had strangled itself a millennia ago. Four thousand years and only six Protectors had been found. Who knew how many more years would pass before the last two would be located and brought to Sanctuary? The Sisters said the seventh was out there—alive, but so far, none had been able to say where the seventh was. Whether it was a man or woman. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Not to mention we still needed a fucking eighth.
Now I found myself attracted to a girl I’d spent nearly every afternoon with since she was a child, except she wasn’t a child anymore. She was a grown woman—a beautiful grown woman, one who I couldn’t trust myself to be around without betraying just how much I desired her.
I hadn’t been back to the Blackmoor’s library since last week. She probably hated me now for avoiding her. The companionship and camaraderie we’d build over the past fifteen years ruined because of my inabilit
y to control my lust.
It’d been like switch had flipped inside my mind. Instead of seeing the sweet innocent girl she had been, I saw a grown woman with curves that made me hard and lips that brought carnal thoughts to my mind. I wanted to taste her. Every fucking inch. I wanted her, wanted to claim her.
Hell, I didn’t even know what that meant, but a small voice deep inside kept whispering that she was meant for me.
Returning to the old routine now wasn’t an option. The thought of seeing Gretchen again and smelling her scent was like sunshine for my dark heart. No matter my mood. No matter what demons from my past clawed to the surface, seeing her made everything better, and I’d lost that.
Thrown it away.
“Hey, Earth to Alek,” Jared said, his tone annoyed and amused at the same time. “Stop thinking about her.”
“Shut up.”
“We’ve been brothers since Fate threw us through that portal together.”
I turned to face my friend and snarled under my breath. “Fate did nothing. My father sent us through. Fate stole our chance to help our families.”
Jared glanced at the table. “I have wished for a chance to take vengeance for a long time, but that wasn’t what Fate intended for us.”
“I know you believe that we were always meant to fight Rose Hilah’s righteous war, but I don’t. I stayed with you because you are my brother, the only family I have on this Earth, but don’t for one second think I believe any of Rose’s bullshit prophecy crap anymore.”
“Anymore? You’re just angry and horny and won’t take my advice about finding someone else to satisfy your dick,” he said, keeping his voice low. Not that it mattered. Everyone and everything in this fucking diner could’ve heard a needle drop at a rock concert if they focused hard enough.
Anger burned in my gut, bubbling and frothing at Jared’s mention of my taking relief in another woman’s bed. The idea made me ill, just as ill as the thought of Gretchen sharing her body with any other male.
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