“You were hunting in Creed territory. Questions were asked.” But not nearly as many questions as were being asked about the latest drained corpse. “You are to hunt in Dominion territory. There are maps given to younglings. Make use of them.”
The girl, who was still more mortal than vampire, nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Seated in a black leather armchair, she shrank to one side when Vandar approached. Not daring to look up, the fledgling vampire said, “If you don’t kill me, I’ll—”
The rumors of Vandar’s harsh enforcement of his rules were exaggerated. He’d never killed a youngling for hunting outside Dominion territory. But her offer intrigued him. “You would what?” he asked, standing over her. It had been too long since he’d bedded a female. He couldn’t help noticing she was naked under her thin T-shirt. Her shockingly pink hair, cropped to fall just below her ears, showed her small round face to advantage. She wore black lipstick. He ran a delicate finger over her nipple piercings and watched her shiver. Her full lips trembled, whether with fear or desire, he didn’t know. Typically, he didn’t care.
“What do the younglings call you?”
“Maggie, sir,” she whispered.
Vandar crouched before Maggie, looking up at her, genuinely curious about what a vampire so low in the ranks could dream up. “And what do you have to offer me for not executing you?”
With a nervous glance between Vandar’s legs, Maggie said, “I’d be yours.”
He found himself amused by Maggie’s offer. Vandar had a reputation for being a brutal lover who took his pleasure from inflicting pain, but on most days it wasn’t true. She must have been truly desperate, an emotion he’d come to know too well these past few weeks. “You don’t think I could make you mine now?”
Defeated, Maggie said, “I know you can have anything you want, sir.”
If his life were that easy, Vandar wouldn’t be awake in the middle of the day, nor would he be taking out his frustration on a defenseless female barely two decades old. “You understand why we have laws about the hunting grounds?”
Sensing that she might not wake up burned to ashes after all, the girl said, “Yes, sir. The Creed doesn’t want us in their territory.”
Vandar said nothing. Maggie apparently took this to mean her answer fell short. “If younglings cause trouble,” she went on, “Lord Marek could take away hunting ground from the vampires.” That wasn’t precisely true, but it kept younglings safely inside Dominion lands.
Enough games. “I know your name now, Maggie. If my counselor speaks of you to me again, I will give you many reasons to regret it. Am I understood?”
She murmured a barely audible, “Won’t see me again, sir.”
Something about the way she said it gave Vandar pause. Was that disappointment in her voice? Mortal emotions were an unruly tangle that irritated him to madness. He rose to his full height, towering over the seated vampire. “Go,” he said, sending the girl away before his patience ran out entirely.
A look of hurt crossed Maggie’s face. She bolted from the chair and fled, barely stopping to open the door. After she left, Vandar returned to the window and stood utterly still, abandoning the charade of breathing.
Two days had stretched into more than two moons. Marek was using ancient scrolls buried so deeply in Shadow World law, they were nearly folklore. He didn’t know how long he stood like that before he turned to Kraeyl and said, “You promised two nights. More than eight weeks have passed.”
“Marek has gone before the council and spoken of the dead mortals surfacing in the park. He has called for a careful consideration of granting you the territory,” Kraeyl said, repeating what Vandar already knew. “That is his right as Lord of the Creed.”
Careful consideration meant that each of the nine warriors on the council were asked to write their opinion on a scroll, defending their vote. It was up to Marek to read the scrolls, and if he chose, to further question individual council members. He could drag this on for months, and all the time the reaper would be on Vandar’s trail. Only luck had saved him thus far.
“Go to Marek,” Vandar said. “End this.” He was seething with rage. Utterly useless. He couldn’t very well rip out his counselor’s throat.
“We must go about this using the law,” Kraeyl said. “The female with red gold in her veins is being courted by a Shade in his haeze.”
Vandar conceded the point. Julian would give new meaning to war and mayhem if the female were wrongfully taken from him. “Who is leaving the bodies to be found?” Vandar had been asking the same question for weeks.
Time and again he had considered simply destroying the drained bodies, burning them, or dismembering them and tossing them into a sea. But the risk was too great. The penalty for such acts was slow death by starvation, locked within a sealed coffin. It could take decades to die. No eyewitness testimony was required. Mere suspicion was enough.
“The cause of the appearance of the bodies in the park remains unknown at this time,” Kraeyl said. His perfectly neutral tone told Vandar his counselor had tried every means—including torture—to find the traitor.
Vandar felt the hunger rising. The draining was too unpredictable for him to risk a hunt until near starvation drove him into the night. It had been nearly two weeks since he last fed. He could have had Kraeyl hunt with him as a preventive measure. But Vandar couldn’t bear for his counselor to witness him at his weakest, thus giving him the power to swear out a death scroll. Kraeyl’s loyalty was unquestioning, but he was subject to temptation.
“Go to Marek,” Vandar said. “Get the contract moved through the council. Promise havoc. Threaten murder. Make him smell the stench of his empire awash in blood.”
Chapter Ten
“It’s barely been two months. CJ’s acting like I’m shopping for a wedding dress.” Sky handed Alvina the box with the laughing jade Buddha she called Mr. Way Too Happy.
She’d been Sky’s first friend when she moved to New York all those years ago. Alvina was a practicing Buddhist who owned Awakened Heart, what CJ called a crystal ‘n’ bead store, in the Village.
Sky loved the peaceful feel of Awakened Heart. From inside, the hurrying world beyond the glass window seemed far away, ghostly. She’d come to see Alvina because when Sky was drowning in her storms of uncertainty, she could always count on her best friend to show her the smooth waters ahead.
In an ankle-length burgundy dress, Alvina looked vaguely like a nun whose order practiced secret sex rites on full moons. She settled the Buddha on a corner shelf. “Two months,” she said, “and from what you tell me, you’ve been on the phone with him almost every day. And not just quick five-minute hello-good-byes.”
Sky thought about Julian. “He doesn’t do anything quick,” she said.
“Am I old enough for this conversation?”
“That’s not what I mean,” Sky said, laughing.
Alvina pushed back her mop of frizzy black hair. She was tall and slender and had clear amber eyes that cut right to the heart of things. “What’s got CJ’s hackles up?”
Sky told the rest of the phone call with her brother.
“Really?” Alvina said, arranging a set of mala beads, Buddhist prayer beads, beside Mr. Happy. “You don’t know his last name?”
“Why are you and CJ so stuck on that?” Sky realized she was taking out her frustration on Alvina and made herself take a breath.
“Because he could call himself Smith or Jones or whatever—but he doesn’t. And CJ, a guy whose breakfast is probably classified, can’t find him.” Alvina turned around on the wooden step stool she’d used to reach the corner shelf and faced Sky. “You don’t think that’s a little this side of weird?”
“I’m not his kid sister anymore, Allie.” Sky felt her face growing hot. She hadn’t realized how much the whole text-before-bedtime thing had gotten under her skin. “Why doesn’t he just leave it alone?”
“Did you tell CJ where you met this Julian guy? Did you tell him you were in
Central Park at two in the morning by yourself in the spot where a serial killer’s dropping off his empties?”
Sky stared down at her fidgeting fingers. “He doesn’t have to know everything.”
“That’s beyond reckless, Sky. I’m not saying CJ should threaten you like he did when you disappeared in Palm Beach, but maybe he’s got reason to be paranoid about you. Did you ever think about that?”
“Reckless? Nobody’s dying in the park. The killer’s just dumping the bodies there.” Alvina gave her a look as if Sky had missed something. “What?”
Adjusting the Buddha so he glowed in the soft lights, Alvina said, “When you get mad at your brother, remember something. CJ would do anything for you. You’re all the family he has. He can’t stand thinking he’d lose you too.”
“You’re always on his side,” Sky muttered.
“I’m not on anyone’s side.” Alvina stepped down, went up to Sky, and kissed her forehead. “I’m just telling you how he sees the world.” She pulled a set of fragrant sandalwood mala beads from a box. “For CJ there’s no I-don’t-know category. It’s either threat or not-threat.”
When Sky’s temper didn’t obliterate her common sense, she knew CJ did the best he could. The deaths of their parents had made him into who he was. But still. “Doesn’t mean he has to act like—”
A knock came at the door. Sky went to get it, paid the delivery guy, and set the pizza on the counter near the cash register.
Alvina laid out a faded Persian rug on the floor and turned over the Awakened sign in the window so it said ASLEEP. Sky doused the lights, lit candles, and thought about Julian. In the last couple months, she’d hardly thought of anything else when she wasn’t working.
When they talked, it felt like he was right beside her, not hundreds of miles away in Montana. He made her feel like everything was right with her world.
The really scary part, the part that made her damn herself for believing in fairy tales, was that in every word Julian said, even the smallest things, he sounded like he’d be there for Sky forever. She couldn’t put her finger on it. There was a feeling she got when she talked to him, like the way she’d feel when she looked up at the stars on a clear night. Even though they moved, they never left the heavens. They were up there for the long haul. Not going anywhere, here to stay, here forever, their sparkling lights said to her. Julian’s voice was like those twinkling stars—here forever.
Sitting on the floor in candlelight, sharing pizza with green peppers, mushrooms, and black olives, Sky tried to tell Alvina all of this. But she felt like nothing she could say came close to telling her best friend how Julian made her feel.
After Sky stopped talking, they ate in silence, sipping red wine from chipped porcelain cups.
“Wow,” Alvina said in a voice soft with awe. “You’ve got it bad for this guy.”
“He’s different, Allie,” Sky said. “I don’t know. It’s like, when I’m with him, I don’t believe anything could go wrong ever again in my whole life.” She dropped her gaze to the rug, waiting for Alvina to tell her how stupid that was, and how that never happened, and what the hell was she thinking.
“Be ready to go,” Alvina said.
That was so far from what Sky had expected, it took her a second to track it. “Go? Where?”
“Something’s coming into your life, Sky. And it’s big. The whole way you live is about to change.”
“You don’t even have your dice out,” Sky said.
“I don’t need the I Ching for this. It’s all over you.”
Outside, two men stopped and talked. One of them checked his watch, and then they went in opposite directions. Sky felt a little like that, as if she were going two opposite ways at the same time. She wanted Julian in her life. But she didn’t want to drown in him. She said this to Alvina.
“What do you control now?” Alvina asked quietly.
Everything. Nothing happened in Sky’s life without her say-so. Nothing. When death stole her parents, she’d promised herself life would never blindside her again. “My job, for one thing,” she said, suddenly finding herself on the defensive.
“What if the building burns down? What if you wake up tomorrow, you sit down to write, and you find out you hate writing? Just getting down one paragraph makes you vomit.”
“That couldn’t happen.” But Sky felt a nervous shiver at the thought.
“Maybe,” Alvina said, “maybe not. The point is, we don’t control anything. And with this Julian guy, you want him”—she ticked off points on her fingers as she talked—“you want total control—”
“It doesn’t have to be total,” Sky said, but even she heard the doubt in her voice.
“And,” Alvina said, holding up a third finger, “you don’t want to fall in love. Because it’s called ‘falling’ for a reason, and my friend, SkyLynne Jordan, does not fall, because we can’t control that, can we?”
Her best friend’s insistent voice penetrated a strange fog Sky had felt caught up in for weeks now. On the brink of tears, she said, “I can’t, Allie. I can’t. He could…”
“Go on,” Alvina said softly, “say it.”
Sky shuddered and let the tears fall. “He could die,” she whispered.
Offering Sky a brown paper napkin, Alvina said, “But there’s a part of you that wants this so badly, it hurts. And you think you can just walk away, but you know if you do, it’ll never stop hurting.”
All Sky could do was nod. Every time she hung up after she talked to Julian, she told herself he wouldn’t always be there, because nobody was always there. But at the same time, she wanted desperately for Julian to never ever not be there. It was slow torture, always being torn two ways, like being ripped in half over and over.
For long seconds, Sky felt so vulnerable she was lost in it. She reached for something in her mind, something to steady her. And what came was Julian’s voice—you’ll always be safe with me. It was so real, she half turned, expecting to find him standing there, as if he could walk through walls. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.
“You know what, my friend?”
“What?”
“You are the worst, the most unconvincing, the most transparent liar I’ve ever heard.”
* * * *
A storm was on the horizon. Sky hurried home from Awakened Heart. By the time she ran up the steps of her building, giant raindrops were falling. Upstairs, she unlocked the door. Inside, rolling thunder rattled the windows.
It was just after midnight. She grabbed a bottle of water and settled into her worn leather chair behind her desk. Alvina’s words echoed through her mind… Be ready to go. It sounded strangely like a warning.
Outside, lightning ripped night into day.
She shivered.
It was the storm, giving her a bad case of living-in-the-city-alone jitters. But she couldn’t shake it. She crept to the window, parted the curtains just a crack, lifted a single blind, and put her eye to the opening. Lightning threw jagged shapes across the deserted streets. Wind scattered fallen leaves into the night. No man with fangs.
She turned and eyed her laptop. Her mind was an absolute blank. Maybe a nap would help. She went into her bedroom, slipped off her jeans, and lay down on top of the covers.
As her eyes slipped closed, the thunder seemed to fall into rhythm with her heartbeat. It wasn’t frightening anymore, because…Julian was there. He was just beyond the door, watching over her, standing guard. She got up and felt the shift of warm fabric against her skin. Looking down at herself, she saw she was wearing a white diaphanous dress that stopped barely a quarter of the way down her thighs. Underneath, she was naked.
She slowly pulled open her bedroom door and stepped into another world. Instead of her desk and laptop and battered armchairs, she was in a room with white, rounded, rough walls. It felt like a cave. Candles, fat and thick, stood in niches, throwing off glimmers of light. There were only three walls. Straight ahead of her, the room opened onto an unending vista
of restless ocean. The moon hung low among glittering stars, full and round, streaking the waves with silver. A four-poster bed with crimson silk sheets was to Julian’s right. Four marble columns supported a curved white canopy. The sheets billowed softly in the ocean breeze.
Julian stood outlined in moonlight, his back to her. He was naked to the waist. His muscled arms hung at his sides, fingers relaxed, but there was tension in his body, as though he were barely holding himself back. His shadow was crisp and clear in the moon’s strong glow.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he said.
At the sound of his voice, Sky felt her nipples rise. A warm breeze made her dress move against her body, and every inch of her was suddenly alive with desire. She went to Julian and wrapped her arms around him from behind, pressing her breasts against her back. His body was warm against hers. She ran her hands up his belly, over his chest, feeling the ripple of muscle there. He let out a quiet moan and freed himself gently from her embrace. Turning to her, he leaned down and kissed her, his tongue invading her mouth as his hands roamed her body. He stood back and undid his jeans, his gaze never leaving Sky.
Her body heated, Sky watched him slip his jeans down over his hips and step out of them. His erection rose from between his legs almost to his navel.
Without thinking Sky was on her knees, kissing up and down his hard length, rubbing her lips over his veined, swollen cock. Julian let out a moan and pulled her to her feet. The desire in his eyes left no doubt what he wanted as he ran his hands through her hair, then bent to kiss her throat. She felt sharp points grazing over her soft skin and sighed softly.
“Julian,” she whispered.
The fingers in her hair tightened, and he pulled her head back. He kissed her roughly, his lips demanding against hers. He pulled away, his breath coming in quick hard pants.
“I have to wait, Sky,” he said. “But I couldn’t stop myself. I felt you dreaming, and I drew you here.”
Wait?
She didn’t want him to wait. She wanted him to take her. Now. She couldn’t remember ever wanting anything more. He kissed her breasts through the thin fabric of her dress, making Sky grind herself against him. She felt his cock become slick with her wetness. Impatient for the feel of Julian’s lips on her bare skin, Sky tore at her dress. It ripped away easily, and Julian’s tongue found her bare, hard nipples and licked and teased.
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