Bodies were still showing up all over town. The entire village cowered in fear, not knowing the source of their threat. Natasha’s grave had been filled in before anyone else realized it had been disturbed, and although the gypsies were vocal about the vampire lore, only the gypsies believed it. They were the ones who took precautions; everyone else wanted a manhunt to find the murderer. Their search parties went everywhere but the one place Nicholai knew the murderer was.
Finally Nicholai made the agonizing decision to kill her master. He’d go at night, he decided, even if that meant he’d have to face Thaddeus as he arose to feed off of the living. All that mattered to Nicholai was that he’d get to see her just one more time. He would face her master and all the dangers that involved, he’d walk through the gates of hell itself if it meant that he could hold her once more. He needed to tell her all the things he should have told her before.
He had taken a cross fashioned out of wood, each point sharpened, and he’d taken his sword, meant to cut the head off of her master. It was the only way he would be truly dead. And in that act he would be able to set Natasha free.
Nicholai arrived at the castle just after sundown. As he made his way through the bottom floor, he heard movement up above as the undead were reanimated with the darkness of night. He braced himself. He was angry, frightened and longing to see her again even if he didn’t know who she would be.
When she flowed down the staircase his breath caught in his throat. He was rooted to the spot, unable to move as he watched her seemingly float across the room. She did not see him. She did not see anything. She moved as though in a trance.
Her face was white and gaunt. Two sharp fangs protruded from her lips and her eyes were milky and vacant. Yet still the sight of her took his breath away. He wanted to call out but could not, and before he could find his voice she was gone.
He pulled the cross from his coat. He knew he had to do something now before she could kill again. With each feeding her soul diminished a little more and he couldn’t allow it. The God he had spent his whole life worshipping would surely hold him accountable one day.
Nicholai raced up the stairway and found Thaddeus in her room. He stood in front of her bed, where her wedding gown still lay, as though he were waiting for her to return to him as his bride.
Nicholai charged him, aiming the cross high, but before he could bring it down into the man's back, Thaddeus whipped around and tossed the bigger, stronger man against the wall.
Thaddeus advanced on Nicholai, his eyes glowing yellow with anger and jealousy, his tone venomous. “I knew you would come for her,” he growled, standing over Nicholai from where he lay in the floor. His long bony fingers wrapped around Nicholai’s neck and he held him high in the air.
“Don’t you know killing me means you will kill her?” Again he tossed Nicholai with ease, and Nicholai landed on the other side of the room with a thud. “If you loved her you would give her the gift of immortality.”
“To make her a monster like you?” Nicholas raged as he stood. “I love her enough to save her soul. You were the one who damned her. And for that you deserve to die!”
Again Nicholai charged Thaddeus, and Thaddeus once again caught him and tossed him away. “You are a fool, Nicholai,” Thaddeus purred. “You could be with her and yet you choose to kill her. What love is that?”
Nicholai hesitated. “What do you mean, be with her?”
Thaddeus opened his arms. “Be one of us. You could be with her forever.”
For one heady moment Nicholas was seduced by the idea. To be with Natasha forever, to never again be parted by the pain of death did sound very attractive. To never say goodbye, to never hold her lifeless body again, maybe that was heaven enough.
In the night a wolf howled and Nicholai was yanked from the spell the older man was casting on him as he advanced. Neither Natasha nor he were murderers. Each time they would feed they would they would step even farther from the two people they were and the pure love they shared. The longer they stayed undead, the more they would long for it. And he knew that.
Nicholai stumbled backward from Thaddeus, tumbling onto the bed and onto the silk of Natasha’s wedding gown. He shook his head but somehow could not find the strength to fight as Thaddeus overtook him. He opened his mouth to scream but it was sucked from the air as Thaddeus consumed him.
When Natasha arrived after her kill, she went immediately to her room to meet Thaddeus. Only when she got there, all she could see was her beloved Nicholai crumpled across her wedding dress, now stained red from his blood.
She rushed to him. “Nicholai!” She turned him to face her, his dark eyes were partially opened and he moaned as he focused on her. His hand reached up to touch her face; she cried copiously as she clutched to him. The blood trickled from the two holes on his neck, the smell filling her nostrils. Her eyes glowed yellow and she had to turn away, forcing the lust to feed way down under her overwhelming love for the man dying in her arms.
Thaddeus entered the room. “What did you do?” she spat out.
Thaddeus dropped the wooden cross on the bed. “It is more what he did, my love. He came to kill me. To kill you. This is the man you love.”
He no longer withheld his wrath as he snatched her away from Nicholai and pulled her to him. “I gave you immortality and yet you love this man who would see you dead. I will no longer wait for you, Natasha. You will finish this and then you will become mine.”
She shook her head. “I refuse.”
“You must!” thundered Thaddeus.
“I cannot condemn him!” she screamed back, wrenching herself away from Thaddeus and running back to Nicholai.
“Then you condemn us both!” Thaddeus roared. “You have a choice now. Let him die, or let him live as one of us. It is the only way to be with your dearest love.”
“You would never let me have him,” she cried out, cradling Nicholai in her arms. “You want me for yourself. I am not a fool.”
Thaddeus flew to where she sat, covering Nicholai protectively. Thaddeus surrounded both of them, molding himself to her body. “You have been mine from the moment I took you,” he whispered into her ear. “You will always be mine. It is because I love you I will allow you to have him. But each time you make love to him you will know who it is you will always belong to.”
Thaddeus trailed a finger along the bloody nape of Nicholai’s neck. He held it under her nose, painting it across her lips. She hissed as she turned from it, but he forced her to look back. “This is who you are!”
She shook her head as she sobbed uncontrollably. Nicholai moaned in her arms. “Natasha,” he murmured. “I love you…”
“I love you too,” she told him, kissing him softly. “I love you too.”
“I’m sorry I sent you away,” he managed but she just shook her head. It all seemed so unimportant now. She tried to shush him but he would not be silenced. Not now. Not this time. “I thought you were dead,” Nicholai managed, his strength evaporating.
“I am, my love,” she told him. “Please do not become what I am. I could not bear it.”
“I have so much to tell you,” Nicholai croaked. His time was drawing short.
She placed a finger on his lips. “I know everything I need to know, just by looking in your eyes.”
A tear raced along his strong cheek. He coughed up even more blood.
“You must make your decision, Princess,” Thaddeus told her. She just shook her head, rocking Nicholai in her arms. “If you love him,” Thaddeus whispered. “You will do it.” She did not respond, and Thaddeus was enraged. “Make your choice!”
Natasha nodded as she lay Nicholai back onto the bed. “It is made,” she said as she grabbed the cross. It burned her hand as she turned on Thaddeus and charged at him, impaling him at once in the chest.
Natasha fell to the ground and her entire world went black.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Adele jerked awake in Nicholas’s arms. Their eyes met and she whispe
red, “I remember.”
He was crying as she gathered him into her embrace. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he began but she just shook her head. Her dream had revealed all. He had no reason to apologize.
“I love you, Nicholai. Now I understand everything I’ve felt since we met. It’s you, my darling. It has always been you.”
He trailed hot kisses along her face. “I’ve waited so long to hear you say those words, my Natasha.” Their lips met in a blazing kiss. It was a kiss to defy time; they had cheated but a few more moments from the capricious hand of mortality.
When they finally came up for air all Adele could do was stare into his eyes, trace his face with her fingers. “How did we get so lucky?” she whispered.
He shook his head, unable to look her in the eye. “We are not lucky, Natasha. We are thieves. Thieves who have manipulated time and space to be together.”
She curled into his arms. She didn’t want to hear those things. What she wanted was to hear his heart beating under his chest. He was alive. He was strong. He was hers.
“I couldn’t take seeing you die again. I struggled with everything I had inside me to go and remove the cross from Thaddeus’s heart, hoping to bring you back. I was willing to become whatever it was you were as long as I didn’t have to lose you again. Only it didn’t revive you, only him. He promised me that if I pledged my faithfulness to him he would bring you back. And God help me, I did.”
Adele held him tighter. “Are you…?” She couldn’t even form the words. How could the noble man she loved be a killer? It surely had eroded his very soul.
“No,” he whispered. “Because I never died the curse was never completed.” He pulled away slightly to unbutton his shirt. There on his chest above his heart were four clean scars. Four familiar scars. “He marked me instead, promising me immortality to live as long as he lived because he knew how to bring you back. All I had to do was wait for you.” He gave her a slight grin. “It’s been a long wait.” The bemused smile twisted into a scowl. “I’ve seen things I should have never seen, allowed things to happen that never should have happened.”
She nodded. “My mother,” she said. “And my brother.”
“Thaddeus was going to destroy him. Male Dhampirs are hunters. He’s killed every child he’s conceived until you. You were the first girl in all these years. But he did not even know you were born. Vincent was born first. Thaddeus took him from your mother, never knowing there was another baby.”
He sighed. “It was my job to kill him. Instead I left him with an orphanage. I could not do it. I just could never kill anyone, especially a child. If he came for me when he was older, then so be it.”
She held him close. How dear he was, despite it all. “But it’s all been a lie. I’ve killed them all,” he murmured before finally looking at her. “I’ve killed even you. He will not stop until he possesses you again. And it is all my fault for being so selfish.”
She took his chin in her hand and forced him to look her in the eye. “Don’t you dare blame yourself, Nicholai. Not when it means I can hold you one more time. I would have walked through hell itself if I had to and I’m not sorry, no matter what.”
She bent in for a kiss and he groaned softly under her parted lips. She teased him until he responded with hunger, unable to let one more night pass apart. They’d made that mistake before.
She pulled him down onto her as she fell back on the sofa, and he needed no instruction where to kiss, where to touch. He’d imagined this moment for two hundred years, making love to nothing but her memory.
She responded with passion under him, pushing her hands under his shirt and pushing the material from his strong shoulders. He propped himself up on his arms to look down at her beautiful face. Their eyes were locked as she slowly and deliberately unbuttoned her blouse. She was ready to give it all to him, everything she had… and everything she was. When she pulled him back to her, they lay bare chest to bare chest, heart to heart. His desire hardened his body until he thought he would split in two if he couldn’t love her. He struggled to regain his senses.
“My darling, we cannot. Thaddeus can see what I see.”
“Then let him see,” she said, her voice husky, her violet eyes clouded with the same passion he had remembered every day they’d been apart. He could not deny her any longer. He engulfed her mouth with his own.
His hand slid up the satiny flesh of her side, coming to rest at last on her full breast. It filled his hand like a promise. She gasped in his mouth as his thumb brushed across the hard peak, and with her hand she guided his mouth along the curves of her body. His hot breath danced over her neck, kissing it lovingly and gently as he kissed his way toward her exposed breast. As his tongue danced over her, her body ached for him to fill her at long last.
“Make me yours, Nicholai,” she begged as she writhed against him.
He groaned as he lifted back up. It was their moment to recapture all that was lost. He would not deny her request.
He stood from the sofa and lifted her easily into his arms. They kissed all the way to the bedroom, where he only paused to lay her on the bed. Their wedding night had long been delayed and now he planned to make up for lost time. She peeled her shirt from her milky white shoulders, tossing it easily into a corner. He unfastened his pants, kicking the clothes away from his hard, bronze body frozen forever at the prime of his manhood. He stood before her naked without shame. She held out a hand to him so that he would finally join her on the bed. Her finger traced along the marks on his chest, and she reached over to delicately kiss each one.
He kissed every exposed inch of her ivory skin, over each hardened peak of her breast and down the curve of her abdomen. She murmured as she pressed herself against him, urging him to do more as his long hair fell against the supple expanse of her tummy. He unbuttoned her jeans and pulled her clothes free so that she would be beautiful and naked under his hard body.
Across town in a darkened hotel room, Thaddeus Dragomir's eyes snapped open. In a bloody haze he watched Adele writhe underneath Nicholas’ mouth as he awakened her at the tip of his tongue. The old vampire could taste her satiny flesh on his tongue, and he shot up in his coffin with a hideous scream. He flew from the room, disappearing through a window, traveling across the night in a smoky mist.
In Adele’s bedroom she was moaning in pleasure as Nicholas’s face nestled between her thighs. His hands were cupping her hips to him while he opened her to him with his tongue. Fireworks exploded in her brain as he brought her pleasure like she had never known. She rode wave after wave under him, trembling in his arms, until she ached to have him fill her with his body. “Make love to me, Nicholai,” she murmured.
He positioned himself over her. “My Natasha,” he whispered. “My bride.”
Just as their lips met the window of her bedroom shattered. Nicholas and Adele jumped apart to find Thaddeus standing larger than life in the middle of her bedroom. His angry eyes glowed dark red. “You traitor!” he hissed at Nicholas.
Adele covered herself with a blanket as Nicholas advanced on Thaddeus. “I betrayed no one!” he shouted back. “This is what you promised me!”
“I promised you would be with her again,” Thaddeus corrected. “And you have. But she is mine. She always will be!”
Adele stepped in between Thaddeus and Nicholas. “I do not belong to you,” she hissed at Thaddeus. “I do not love you. I never did.”
Thaddeus’s snarling face morphed into a smile. “So you remember everything. You know now what you were born to do.”
“Yes.” She held her head high. “I was born to love Nicholai. Death could not change it. You cannot change it!”
“I do nothing,” Thaddeus said, his eyes glinting evilly. “As always, the choices are yours.”
Nicholas cried out in pain behind her. She whirled around to find one of his scars erasing itself from his skin. Nicholas stumbled back and fell on the ground, aging quickly and painfully. “No!” Adele cried as she ran t
o him.
“Come to me, my princess,” Thaddeus crooned, his arms open to her.
“I will never come to you,” she screamed. Another scar was ripped from Nicholas’s chest. His dark hair turned stark white as his body began to deteriorate under his sagging skin.
“Are you sure?” Thaddeus asked but Adele could only focus on Nicholas.
“I cannot lose you again, Nicholai,” she wailed. He reached up to capture the tears pouring from her face.
“Natasha, my Natasha…”
“Make your choice!” exclaimed Thaddeus.
Another scar erased, Nicholas was an old man in her arms. She shook her head as she rocked him.
“If you love him, you will do it,” Thaddeus said.
Nicholas looked up at Adele. Hundreds of years of instant aging could not even touch the pain of living them without her. He had experienced heaven when he found her again, touched her again, felt her alive and warm and well in his arms. If those hundreds of years of evil deeds meant she could live again, then it was worth it even if they were never meant to be one. “Let me go, Natasha.”
She shook her head, unable to do as he asked. She couldn’t lose him now that she’d found him. Life could not be so cruel.
Only Thaddeus was that cruel. Adele watched as the final scar filled itself in until it was gone. Nicholas slumped in her arms.
“No!” Adele screamed.
Thaddeus laughed as he watched her stumble away from her dead lover. “Now you see that you have nothing without me. Come to me, Natasha. Do not forsake what you were born to do.”
Hatred burned with a white hot intensity as she rose to face him. “Get the hell out of here!” she screamed. “I revoke my invitation!”
With a hideous scream Thaddeus was yanked from her bedroom, his body folded completely in half as he was sucked backward out of her broken window.
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