When Wicked Craves

by J. K. Beck

Pushing Serge back with her mind and calling for Kiril with her voice. Over and over, until she feared it wasn’t working and he wouldn’t wake. And then—“Petra?”

  His voice, low and groggy, had her almost sagging in relief, but she didn’t let up the mental chant to Serge.

  Stop. Don’t. Stay.

  “Wind!” she cried aloud.

  Her brother, thank God, understood.

  It started slow—too slow, she feared—but before she could alter her chant and beg him to increase the wind’s fury, he did so himself. Papers whipped around the room, faster and faster as the wind kicked up and up, a tornado gathering at the center among the five of them, the tight wind dark with dust and debris.

  And then bits of debris came flying out.

  A book, surging across the room to batter Nicholas. A broken beaker, barely missing him.

  “No!” she cried, but she couldn’t say more, not and keep up the chant, and if she didn’t keep up the chant then she would be the reason Nicholas died, not Kiril.

  On the far side of the windstorm, Ferrante stood firm, his hands out, as if he was gathering magic. That was exactly what he was doing, she realized, and if he gathered enough, he’d be able to override her inexperienced control over the monster, which now stood, frozen immobile by the warring commands being thrown at it.

  But not immobile for long.

  She was running out of time. Nicholas was running out of time.

  A few feet away, Kiril shifted to look at her, and this time she saw the jealousy on his face unshielded. And the desire.

  Oh dear God. She finally understood. It was more than a brother’s love she saw in his eyes. It was the love of a man for a woman, and the realization made her shudder with sadness and despair.

  “Kiril, no! If you love me, no!”

  He blinked, his expression confused. “You love him?”

  Tears streaked her face. “I do. Please, Kiril. I do.”

  He turned away slowly, as if in a trance, and she kept up the mental chant against Serge, infusing it with all the hope she had in her.

  A knife burst from the tornado, heading straight toward Nicholas.

  She screamed out in agony and frustration, but then its trajectory changed and Kiril was using the wind to hurl it straight toward Ferrante.

  “You will not!” Ferrante howled, lifting his arm. Pointing the gun.

  Pulling the trigger.

  The bullet shot out, the report deafening.

  And then Kiril was on the ground, and the tornado was fading, and Petra was certain that all was lost.

  “It’s over,” Ferrante said as she frantically, tearfully, took up the chant again, trying to counteract his order:

  “Serge, kill.”

  But then a final gust of wind burst through the room, shooting shards of broken glass toward Marco. One lodged in his throat, and he fell, the gun falling from his hand as he staggered backward to grasp at the glass even as the wind died … and as Kiril died with it.

  But still, Serge held Nicholas.

  And Petra realized that although her brother had managed a final assault—a final attempt to help save the man she loved—he hadn’t managed to kill Marco.

  Serge remained a monster.

  Held above Serge, Nick saw their chance. “Have him drop me,” he called to Petra.

  With Marco injured, it should be easier for her, but Nick could see the fatigue on Petra’s face. And now that Serge had no warring commands controlling him, his own monstrous urge to rip and destroy was coming out. Nick could feel the hands tighten, and he called down, yelling Serge’s name. “I’m your friend, dammit. If you’re in there at all, Serge, it’s Nick!”

  He had no idea if it worked, but he did know he wasn’t being ripped in two, so that was good.

  Across the room, Marco lay in a pool of blood. But he was still breathing. Worse, he was crawling.

  The gun.

  In the force field, beads of sweat gathered on Petra’s forehead, her hands clenched at her sides.

  Silently, he urged her to hurry.

  And then, as if she’d pulled into her all the magic she could find, she boomed out a loud, imperious command. “Drop him!”

  Serge did, and Nick scrambled toward the gun, Serge behind him.

  Nick tossed himself forward, his fingers almost grasping the weapon, but Serge grabbed his leg, pulling him down, still inches from the gun.

  “No!” Petra screamed. “Serge! Stop!”

  The hold relaxed. Nick jerked his leg free. He had the gun and in seconds he was up. In seconds he fired.

  And he put a bullet right between the eyes of his old friend and mentor.

  Marco was dead.

  It had worked.

  Behind Nick, Serge collapsed to the ground.

  And on the far side of the room, Petra cried out.

  Nick raced to her, then found the controls that operated the force field.

  “Petra,” he cried, and then hesitated before pulling her into his arms.

  “It worked,” she said, smiling through tears. “Killing Marco—it cured me. I can feel it. I can tell.” She slid into his arms and held him close as he stroked the back of her hair. “It worked.”

  They stayed that way for an eternity, until Serge stood and came to them. Nick looked up at his friend. This wasn’t the creature that’d destroyed Dirque and Trylag and so many others. But neither was it the same old Serge. The scent of him was different. His skin was different. And Nick tried very hard not to fear what else might be different.

  “Thank you,” Serge said, focusing on both Nick and on Petra.

  “Serge,” Nick said, then stopped, unsure what else he wanted to say.

  “I must go. The Alliance seeks me for my crimes.”

  “That wasn’t you,” Petra protested.

  Serge faced her square on. “Wasn’t it?”

  “Stay,” Nick said. “We’ll get you back to New York. I’ll get this worked out with the Alliance. You don’t need to be out there. Not now.”

  The corner of Serge’s mouth lifted. “Worried about what I am now, Nicholas? Don’t be. I’m more than I was before. But I’m not a plague upon the earth, and my daemon sleeps. Give me time. I will return.”

  “Serge—”

  “Good-bye, Nicholas,” he said, and then he turned and walked out of the lab.

  “Should you let him go?”

  Nick considered the possible responses. He could run after Serge and beg, but unless Serge wanted to stay, he was going. And because of the hematite, Nick was in no position to fight him. What would be the point, anyway? “It’s okay,” Nick finally said. “He’ll be back.”

  She nodded, and for a moment, they simply looked into each other’s eyes, both overwhelmed by everything that had transpired.

  Then slowly—so very slowly—she pressed her palm to his cheek.

  A shiver ran through her and a single tear spilled down her cheek. Nick brushed it away with the pad of his thumb, and before he could pull his hand back, she caught it, and pressed her face against his hand.

  She looked up at him, and he trembled from the depth of emotion he saw there.

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  “I love you, too,” she said. “Forever.”

  EPILOGUE

  Petra lay naked in bed, her body twined with Nicholas’s, flesh upon flesh, so intimate that when she closed her eyes she couldn’t tell where she ended and he began.

  Heaven.

  The Ritz Paris was huge and beautiful, wonderfully appointed, but Petra didn’t much care. The bed was firm, the sheets were clean, and room service was awesome.

  As far as hotels went, those were her only current requirements.

  Beside her, Nicholas shifted as he woke up, now fully healed from the hematite dust. He propped himself on his elbow and smiled at her. “You look beautiful.”

  “I have bed head,” she countered, and leaned over to kiss him, taking it slow and savoring the feel of her lips against his. “Yo
u’re going to have to deal with it, because I’m not getting up.”

  He stroked a hand down her side, over the curve of her hip, and she practically purred. “Really not a problem.”

  She sighed. It had been a full week since she’d been freed from the curse, and the first two days had been a whirlwind of official activity. She’d been checked out by Division 18 and Alliance doctors and scientists and pronounced curse-free, which she already knew, and immortal, which she hadn’t been sure of. She’d told the medical team about the elixir that Marco had put in her drink. They’d found traces of it in his lab, and a series of magic and scientific tests had confirmed that the elixir—in combination with her magical bloodline—rendered her immortal.

  Amazing, but she supposed she had to thank the murderous freak for giving her a very long life with Nicholas.

  She ran her bare toes up Nicholas’s calf. Forever.

  She liked the sound of that.

  “I got a text from Luke a few hours ago. Gunnolf’s being fitted for a prosthetic today.”

  “Good,” she said. She wasn’t feeling all warm and fuzzy toward the werewolf, but in the end he and Tiberius had come through for her. All charges had been dropped against her and Nicholas. She was a free woman. It felt pretty damn good.

  “Are he and Sara coming for the funeral tomorrow?”

  “They are. Sara’s hearing was yesterday and all charges were dropped. They said they’d see us at the service.”

  Petra had debated whether to take Kiril’s body back to the States, but in the end she’d decided to stay in France. His favorite author was French—Flaubert—and she thought he’d like it here. The funeral was scheduled for tomorrow, just after sunset.

  Nicholas stroked her cheek. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded. “It’ll get easier.”

  “He loved you, and in the end he proved to you just how much.”

  “I know.” Although she hadn’t told Nicholas just how much Kiril had loved her—because that was Kiril’s secret that should die with him—Nicholas was still right that Kiril had acted out of love. She only wished she’d understood how he felt earlier, wished she hadn’t completely missed all the signs. She would have tried to help him. Tried to break all the binds between them, and not just her grandmother’s spell.

  But it was over, and in the end, her brother had saved her life and Nicholas’s. And that was one hell of an epitaph.

  Rand and Lissa were coming, too, and Petra and Lissa had already planned the world’s most massive shopping day in Paris. She’d never had a girl’s day, complete with a massage, and she was looking forward to it with almost absurd anticipation.

  She rolled over and spooned up against Nick, then sighed with pleasure as he curled his body around hers, the sensation familiar and yet still deliciously new.

  She closed her eyes, warm and safe and happy.

  But underneath it all, she felt something else. Faint stirrings. Hints of unease. Serge?

  She frowned and slid off the bed.

  “Petra?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I want to see Paris.”

  She pushed the curtains aside and looked out, taking in the lights and the bustle of the amazing city. Below them, crowds surged, a river of humanity that she could join now, whenever she wanted to.

  Nick came up behind her and slid his hands around her waist. “Want to go down and rub shoulders with the masses?”

  She laughed and turned in his arms, the feeling of unease fading against the glow of the man.

  “Absolutely not,” she said, tilting her face up for a kiss. “Right now, I only want you.”

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  CHAPTER 1

  Zermatt, Switzerland

  The bar was dark, so dark that it was hard to see the faces of the men and women huddled around tall tables or leaning against the centuries-old bar, looking for a drink or a good time or both.

  Caris stood in deepest shadows, back in the far corner, beyond the dartboard and the karaoke stage where a Teutonic male croaked out the Beatles’ “Help!” in broken English.

  He spread his arms wide, gyrated his hips, and mangled the chorus. Caris cringed, and in a moment of rare charity hoped that he hadn’t come to get laid, because no woman in the bar looked drunk enough to take him home. And that said a lot, since most of the people in the small bar smelled of sex and lust and pure animal heat. So much so, in fact, that the power of their passion seemed to cling to her, making her skin burn and her hunger build.

  But she hadn’t come for sex. She’d come for something entirely different.

  Caris had come to kill.

  Slowly, she scoured the faces of the men in the bar, the darkness no hindrance to her vampiric vision. She’d never seen his face, and during her captivity he’d taken care to mask his scent, yet she knew exactly who she was looking for. His description was set out in excruciating detail in the dossier she’d received that morning from a particularly resourceful PI she’d retained in Zurich.

  She sighed. For decades she’d followed so many leads, only to find that she’d been stalking the wrong prey.

  This time though …

  By the gods, this time she had to be right. One more false lead and she feared she would snap. Orion had told her over and over she should simply quit. Pack it in. Throw in the towel and all those other cutesy sayings for giving up. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. That would mean that he would have won. That he’d taken her perfect life and ripped it into tiny pieces.

  And that was unacceptable. There was a price for pain.

  Tonight, he’d learn just how heavy a price her pain had borne.

  One by one, she examined the faces in the bar, ignoring the two blond male vampires hunched in a corner. She wasn’t interested in other vamps. Not tonight.

  She let her eyes pass over the females, focusing only on the men. The breadth of their chests. The cut of their shoulders. Searching for a man with a bulky frame and the same dark hair and thin mustache reflected in the dossier picture.

  He wasn’t there.

  Goddamn it all, he wasn’t there.

  With a series of curses burning her tongue, she whirled around. Maybe he was in another bar. Maybe he was hiking the damn Matterhorn. Maybe the universe was playing one big nasty trick on her.

  Didn’t matter. Ultimately, she’d find him. Ultimately, she’d—

  Tiberius?

  It wasn’t him, of course. Not the man she’d once loved with every breath in her body. But the midnight-black hair and infinite eyes had caught her attention as surely as Tiberius’s had that first night when he’d strode into her father’s court, a stranger offering his services as a warrior and a strategist. The resemblance was striking, and for the briefest of moments, her throat tightened and her pulse burned, violent anger warring with the deepest of desire.

  It wasn’t her father who had held the stranger’s interest. It was her. He’d walked with her in the moonlight, his touch making her blood simmer and her pulse quicken.

  She’d looked out over her father’s land and seen nothing but Tiberius, wanted nothing but him. His touch. His kiss. His everything.

  And eventually, he had told her his secret. Had told her about the dark kiss. About the shadows.

  He’d told her what he was.

  His gaze had never left her as he spoke, searching her eyes for fear or loathing. He hadn’t found it. How could she ever be scared of him? Instead, she’d been intrigued, certain that she was looking destiny in the face. That he was her destiny.

  Tiberius. Her mate. Her love.

  “Buy you a drink?” the man in front of her asked, and when he spoke the illusion faded. His was the voice of
a man who picked up women in bars. Definitely not Tiberius.

  She paused, looked him slowly up and down, then continued toward the door.

  He fell into step beside her despite the brush-off. Apparently, he was either stubborn or stupid.

  “You’re alone,” he said.

  “Your powers of perception are mind-boggling.” She kept on walking.

  “A woman like you shouldn’t be alone.”

  She stopped, then slowly turned to face him. “And what kind of woman is that?”

  “A beautiful one.”

  “Trust me,” she said. “It’s a deadly beauty.”

  “I know.” He was looking at her hard, and she could smell the truth on him. He knew what she was, and damned if that didn’t excite him. The prospect of blood teased her daemon, the dark malevolence that lived deep inside every vampire, and her hunger grew.

  The wolf stirred, too. The secret beast inside her. He’d made her this way, and she’d come to kill in payment for his dirty little tricks. For turning her into walking death. An outsider in her own damn world.

  Can’t go there, Caris. Don’t even think it.

  “I want what you can give.” He looked at her with eyes wide and wild, like a junkie staring into a candy jar filled with meth.

  “Death?”

  “The rush.” His chest rose and fell with his breath, the scent of desire wafting off him. He licked his lips and took a step toward her. “I know what you are,” he said, then tilted his head to the side. “Feed.”

  Something raw and angry welled inside her. “You have no idea what I am,” she said. “You don’t have a goddamned clue.”

  “You’re a vampire.”

  The word hit her with the force of a slap, and she stepped closer, so close she could feel the heat of his excitement rising from his bone-pale skin. “I’m not,” she said. “Not anymore.” Not fully, anyway. If she were, Tiberius wouldn’t have kicked her out. Now she was something new. Something horrible.

  She looked into those dark eyes and saw the fear growing, a fear that fed and fueled her, that primed her up and begged her to take, take, take. To get revenge. Against the man she hunted, yes. But more against the man who’d loved her up until the day he’d dumped her. She wanted to give Tiberius the big Fuck You. And right now … right now it was this guy standing in front of her. This guy, waiting for her to take his blood, his life …