Naram growled, and I felt magick snake around my body like thousands of vines all growing at once. My body lifted from the ground and raced toward Naram and Alek. Fuck.
He waved me in front of Alek’s beak. “Let me pass or I snap him like a little twig. Then your Dragon friend is next.”
I couldn’t see Miles, but I assumed he was similarly bound with magick and unable to move. “Just knock the fucker out, Alek.”
The Gryphon’s eyes widened, but he backed away instead of advancing.
“Smart boy,” Naram cooed. He dropped me to the ground before disappearing into the castle, headed for the foyer.
Ice cracked above me, shattering and falling in giant chunks toward the ground.
“He broke the ice. They’re coming in,” Miles roared, diving to knock a woman out of the way of a particularly large shard of ice falling from the dome above. The refrigerator-sized hunk impaled the grassy earth where she’d been with a grisly thud. Seconds later, more ice fell.
“They will have to crawl over the walls one at a time.” I shouted, running to help another person get out of the open courtyard part of the castle. I snatched up a young Lycan who was limping across the courtyard and dove for a covered space. We landed beneath the walkway as a huge piece of ice fell behind us, gouging a hole in the earth.
“Thank you,” he gasped out.
“Get inside. Find the others. Asa is evacuating.”
“The Djinn woman?” The young man’s tone was incredulous.
“Yes,” I heaved myself from the ground. “Hurry. Marcus and Sita should be with her.”
He clambered to his feet and disappeared down a hallway. I turned to look for Miles, but couldn’t find him among the throng of shifted Lycans tearing into men dressed in brown fatigues, sporting automatic rifles. Several Djinn were at the center of the group, slicing through anything that came near them. No guns for them.
I drew the sword from the sheath on my back and charged the nearest soldier, taking him down with a single blow before he could fire a shot. Then I moved onto the next and the next. None of them were trained to evade swordplay. They were human. Xerxes had brought human soldiers to fight? To sacrifice was a better term.
Bullets flew through the courtyard as the soldiers spread out. The yelp of wounded Lycan wolves made me cringe, but I had to keep going. We had to hold back the siege long enough for Asa to evacuate as many people as possible. And by the gods, I hoped Naram would take Xerxes head off and end this once and for all.
I heard a snarl behind me and dodged just in time to avoid a nasty kick to the back. Rolling to my feet, I whirled and faced my attacker. This guy was still dressed in fatigues, but he was no human. He was Lycan. His eyes sparked with the magick of his animal, but supernatural or not, I was better trained. He charged with a knife in his hand, and I skillfully ducked aside and swung, bringing my sword down, slicing his head clean from his body.
Miles’s roar echoed through the courtyard. He was red hot and breathing fire at anything and anyone that came near him. The bullets, thank the gods, just bounced off his body, and he tore through the oncoming wave of soldiers like the scythe of death himself. The ground at my feet was stained brown with watered-down blood and ash.
I crossed the courtyard, dodging a few well-aimed knives, and chased a Djinn I’d seen trying to sneak into the castle. The women and children inside waiting to be moved by Asa didn’t stand a chance.
“Hey!” I shouted. The Djinn turned and swung a huge sword. The swoosh of air kicked all my muscle memory into gear. I dropped backward, narrowly escaping a fatal wound. My back hit the stone floor with a thud, and as he came down with his sword, I drove up with mine, ending his life.
My heart raced, and sweat poured from my brow. Too close. I heaved forward then pulled my sword from his belly. He fell into a bloody heap on the floor, and I continued down the hallway, checking each room for stragglers. Asa had been busy. All the rooms downstairs were empty. Good girl. At least she’d pulled it together and was helping us instead of wallowing in grief over losing her daughter. We’d all lost people. Grief for the dead would wait until the living were safe.
It was time for that damned Lamassu to die.
Chapter 40
GODRIC
My body felt as though it’d been beaten thoroughly, but something was different. I cracked one eye open and licked my lips. The taste of Calliope’s blood still lingered there, and it jarred me faster out of whatever it was that had happened to me. What had happened?
I stared at the ceiling for a few seconds before I realized that I could only hear one heartbeat in the room. As a vampire, I was always conscious of that number without effort. There was only one…and it wasn’t mine. What the fuck?
My hand flew to the mattress. Empty. Where was Calliope? I sat up slowly, fighting through the lethargy and pain. Again. What the fuck had happened to me? I shook my head, as if that would clear the confusion. It did nothing but make my head hurt worse.
“Calliope,” I said, my voice sounding like nails on glass. I coughed and tried again. “Calliope?”
She jumped up from the floor across the room with a wild look on her face. “You. You were.” She backed toward the door, watching me, terror etched on every line of her face. “You were dead.”
Dead?
I moved to the side of the bed and groaned, every muscle felt as though it hadn’t moved in years. I needed to eat. Scratch that. I needed to drink.
If my heart wasn’t beating any longer, was I only vampire? Had that side of me finally killed the other half—the Djinn half? I tried to teleport and failed. My chest seized, and my mouth fell wide open. I couldn’t. The ability was gone. I was no longer Djinn.
I was vampire.
Completely.
Only.
Separated permanently from my kind. No hope of returning to the place I used to hold within my family. Self-pity began to well up inside me. Then I looked up at Calliope again.
Her red hair was mussed, and her eyes bloodshot. Her face was splotchy from crying. How long had she thought I was dead? Gods, she still had no memories of anything and would’ve been alone.
I never wanted her to be alone. Ever. I raised my hands, holding them out to her trembling form and crossed the room slowly. “I’m okay, Calliope. I promise.”
“You left me. You died. I lost you. It hurt so much. I don’t even know how to explain, but it felt like I had died on the inside.” She wrapped herself in her arms, and more tears rolled down her cheeks, each one slicing me like a knife.
“I’m so sorry.” I wanted to touch her. Comfort her. Hold her. Just be near her, but I needed her to come to me. I couldn’t force it. She was so scared. “I’m never going to leave you again.”
“What happened to you?” she asked, not closing the gap between us.
“The Djinn half of me finally died.”
“Finally? You were expecting it?” She paused mid-step and then backed up instead.
“No, I’ve been a hybrid for thousands of years. I wasn’t—”
“You’re thousands of years old?” she squeaked out.
I chuckled out loud and smiled, her naivety was refreshing. “Don’t get bent out of shape. You’re pretty old, too. You’re one of the only Siren’s left on earth.”
Her shoulders dropped some of the tension she was carrying. Her facial muscles relaxed, though she didn’t give me a smile. At least she was calming somewhat. The sobs had receded to the occasional hiccup.
I did my best not to stare down the neckline of her shirt. The last thing she needed was me comforting her with a hard-on. But it was so difficult. Her breasts heaved, just enough to drag my attention from her face for a second—just a second. When I met her gaze again, she was blushing a bright pink.
“You’re definitely not dead anymore,” she said, a hint of amusement twinkling in her big brown eyes.
“What can I say? You’re my mate. I want you.” I wanted to add that I really wanted another drink o
f her, but I didn’t. I could wait…a little. I thought. The urge was so strong. She smelled so good. And beyond that, I could hear every heartbeat in this little hotel. Damn. I really needed to eat. And have her again. Possibly both at the same time.
“Your eyes are turning red, Godric,” she said.
“I’m hungry.”
“But you just drank from me.” One of her hands absently touched the side of her neck where I’d bitten her during our lovemaking.
“I don’t usually need more this quickly. So I’m assuming it’s a side effect of—”
“Dying?” she said, finishing my thought for me.
I nodded. “I’ll find something. Don’t—”
“You most certainly will not,” she said, her tone raised and angry. As if the mere thought of me drinking from another offended her.
It hadn’t sat well with me, either, but I wasn’t about to force another feeding on her this quickly. Not while she was still struggling to recover from the shock of me dying in front of her. Hell, she wasn’t the only one still reeling from that development.
“Unless you’re using your fangs as a weapon, you only feed from me. Only me,” she said, closing the gap between us quickly.
The honey scent of her sweet body filled my lungs, and my fangs descended, eager to taste the sweetness of her blood again. She was a rare vintage I would never be able to get enough of. And she was claiming me as hers. Nothing could’ve made me more pleased.
“That is what you’re doing, right? Feeding?” She pulled her long red hair off her shoulder, baring her creamy white neck. “I don’t want you to feed from anyone else.” She paused, looking for the words to explain the mate pull she felt. But she didn’t understand magick. Or even what she really was.
“I understand, Calliope. I want none other than you. We are mates.”
“There’s something missing, though. Like I almost have you, but not quite. It feels as though you are only halfway through the door.”
I took her by the shoulders and leaned my forehead down to meet hers. “We’ll figure this out. We’ll find the answer if it’s there to find. I promise you.”
She nodded and released a long breath before slipping her hands around my waist and pulling her body flush with mine. I growled as my cock prodded her soft belly. Her nipples were pebbles beneath the fabric of her shirt. I wanted her again. Everything. But we needed to find her sisters. I’d promised her we would and old-Calliope had been so urgent. So worried.
But I was weak. There would be no searching outside without regaining my strength. I couldn’t teleport any longer, which meant I’d have to use my vampire speed to blur, and that meant I’d be using a lot of energy.
“We need to find your sisters, Calliope. I promised. Believe me, I’d rather stay in that bed with you for the next week, but I’d never forgive myself if something happened to them and I could’ve prevented it.” I ducked my head lower to kiss her cheek. “And I do need to eat,” I said softly into her ear.
She nodded, her cheek scraping the scruff on my face.
I trailed kisses down to the curve where her neck met her shoulder. My fangs ached, and my mouth salivated for the sweetness I knew was coming. For the magick that flowed through her veins. Not only was she my mate, which made her blood more desirable, but she was Siren—and there was no other magick like hers.
Chapter 41
CALLIOPE
My knees trembled when he bit. The shock of the pain was brief and all too quickly covered by a rush that had my skin super sensitive and the rest of me instantly hungry for anything he would give. I needed him near me. I wanted him closer.
My explanation about the connection I felt to him had been lackluster, but I didn’t understand what was happening to me. According to him, I didn’t really know what I was, either. Though I’d used magick in the store to open that closet, I wasn’t sure how. I’d only thought about the shelves swinging open and waved my hand as a joke.
Maybe we could go back for that journal the letter mentioned. Maybe it would have the information I sought. Maybe it would tell me what I was missing. What I still needed.
When he finally licked my shoulder and pulled back, I had to exert effort to focus my vision. My head was lighter than normal, and when I tried to take a step, I faltered. Had it not been for Godric’s quick reflexes, I would’ve plummeted to the floor face first.
He sat me on the edge of the bed and then gathered up his clothes from the various places they’d landed in the room. “It’s almost dark.”
“All the better to move around without being seen. The map indicates your sisters or a clue to their whereabouts are a couple miles up the coastline. Now that I’ve fed, we can get there quickly.” He held up a pair of lacy panties and then returned to my side. “I’d much rather leave these off, but your sisters would probably appreciate us both being clothed.”
I smiled and took the panties from him. My head was still a little light, and he was fully dressed before I even got a good look at him. Which was a shame, because I really could’ve just stared at his body for hours without thinking at all. He was all taut lines and rippling muscles, and he smelled so good.
“Calliope?”
I looked up and met his questioning gaze. “Sorry, lightheaded. I’m apparently moving slow at the moment.”
He flashed me a large smile, and my heart did a backflip inside my chest. Whatever was going on with my sisters or me, I didn’t care. He was mine. I was his. We were together, and that was what really mattered. Surely the father the letter mentioned wasn’t as bad as he’d sounded. And we’d gotten to this town fast. We’d just warn my sisters and then be on our way—wherever that might lead.
Godric slid an arm around my waist, and we headed downstairs. A young woman sat at a desk at the front entrance. She glanced up at Godric with a suspicious glint and reached for a phone. He moved to stand in front of her immediately. He said a few words in a language I didn’t recognize, and the suspicious look in her eyes dissipated. Instead, she pulled her hand away from the phone, handed him a key from the wall behind her, and then smiled.
“What did you say to her?” I asked as we walked toward the front entrance. The last rays of sunlight cast a swath through the middle of the paneled foyer. The room was covered floor to ceiling with light colored wood, just like the room upstairs. Godric hissed and jerked me backward the second we stepped into the light.
“What’s wrong?”
He growled deep in his chest and rolled his neck from side to side, staring at the beam of light like it was evil incarnate. “Slight problem. I’m apparently not sun-proof any longer. We’ll need to wait a few more minutes for the sun to dip below the horizon completely before I can safely go outside.”
“It hurts you?” I asked.
He nodded. “I’ll burn. Literally.”
Fear gripped my chest, and I tightened my hold on his arm. “So you can never—”
“Shhhh, not here.” He flicked his eyes toward the woman at the desk arranging her pencils by length. “I’ll be fine. There are people who fix these things. It just may take some time to find one of them.”
“What kind of people?”
“Witches,” he whispered, tugging me toward some pictures hanging on the wall across the room. We stood, staring at several depictions of a bay. One calm and serene and so blue the water appeared as glass. The next was gray and cloudy and waves swelled angrily. The third was white, the bay covered with ice and snow pouring from the heavens.
“What did you say to her?” I asked again, still curious how he’d turned her to his favor so easily.
“Just a little glamor. Vampires can influence humans to do as they bid,” he said, keeping his voice at a whisper.
“Can you do that to me?”
“No, Sirens have influencing magick as well. It counterbalances and blocks it. Yours doesn’t work on me, either, though, so we’re even.”
“How do you know?”
“The old you tried to us
e it on me.” He looked over his shoulder at the door. The beams of light were gone. The sun had fallen below the horizon. “We can go now.”
Just as we turned, the French door swung open, and a tall man walked inside. Dark hair, smooth face, with a few wrinkles at the corners of his mouth and eyes. Something about him was familiar—not how he looked—but something else. Something I could feel, but not explain. He looked straight at me, his dark brown eyes sizing me up before moving to take in Godric. The man spoke a single word, and Godric stiffened beside me, but nodded and repeated the same strange word back before leading me around the man and out the door.
“What did that—” Before I could finish my question, Godric lifted me into his arms and ran. Except it wasn’t the running like I would’ve done. He moved with an unnatural speed. The landscape blurring past so quickly I couldn’t even make out what it was. Then as quickly as we started, we stopped. “—man ask?” The end of my question finally gasped out.
“He just greeted us, but, Calliope, his magick felt similar to yours.”
“You mean he was a Siren?”
“He has to be the man the letter warned about—your father.”
I swallowed hard and stared at the ground beneath my feet. Pebbles. Silt. Everything was wet and rocky. The wind burst, and a salty spray filled the air. I looked up and out at a beach that seemed anything but calm.
Godric took my hand and tugged gently. “We have to find your sisters and then leave this place as soon as possible, while it’s still dark.”
I tried to ignore the fear crawling up my spine. It twisted and clung to me like a vine choking out a tree. I hadn’t been afraid before. None of it had seemed real. The letter. The map. Sisters. An evil father.
But now…now he was here.
Now it was real.
Chapter 42
CALLIOPE
Sanctuary, Texas Complete Series Box Set Page 133