“Well,” I said, reluctantly. “Thank you for your help.”
He continued to smile.
“You wished to talk,” Hakan said, his voice mellow and somehow reaching out to wrap around me.
I shifted slightly, feeling the tendrils of his Sanguis Vitam as it stroked up my side. He was neither trying to calm me nor reassure me. He was copping a feel, and I did not appreciate that he did it now.
I sent a contained blast of my Light back at him, and he jerked. His eyes flashed silver. The vampire hunted.
Damn.
“Your father does not know that Lucien has joined with his Second,” the Ambrosia said, forcing all thoughts of Hakan’s chase from my mind.
“How did you know?” I asked.
The ancient vampire looked at me and smirked. “I didn’t.” Until I opened my stupid mouth and confirmed it for him.
“And now?” I ground out between clenched teeth.
“I must advise him. But I need not do so immediately.”
“Why?” I asked, suspiciously. Nothing this vampire did was without careful thought and planning. What was in it for him? More power? Longer life?
“There is unrest in Auckland,” the vampire said. “Now would not be the time to spread the Iunctio’s resources thin.”
Papa would send out a battalion to find his Second and save Luc.
“What sort of unrest?” I asked, stalling for time.
“The type we have long feared.”
“The Norms know the Iunctio is there,” I surmised.
“Someone let it slip. Someone we have little control over.”
“The Mhachkay.”
The Ambrosia looked toward Hakan.
“Hakan didn’t do it,” I insisted.
Hakan said nothing, just met the ancient vampire’s sepia-toned eyes.
“But the prince can stop it,” the Ambrosia said.
That’s why he was here, I realised. Because he wanted something. Survive at all costs. His precious Iunctio was under threat. And to save it, save himself, he would turn to an outcast Mhachkay.
“How do you suggest I achieve this?” Hakan asked.
“Entwine Lucien’s blood. Take your rightful place. End this.”
Motherfucker. The Ambrosia knew about Entwining. He’d known about it when my father had insisted I join with Alain. That’s why he’d let me go. That’s why he’d practically encouraged it.
You have more power than any of them. What will you do, child?
Son-of-a-bitch. He’d never intended for the joining to go ahead, even as he’d proffered the knife.
And then it hit me. Entwine Lucien’s blood. If we found a Mhachkay to entwine with my brother, we could save him. We could possibly even save Alain, as well.
I turned toward my Savaşçı, hope replacing all other unwanted emotions for now.
Hakan stared at the Ambrosia, nothing of what he thought evident on his warrior façade.
And then he said one word that shattered my world. That broke me.
“No.”
4
We Are Not Kindred
I managed to hold my tongue until the Ambrosia left. Years of watching my parents face off against powerful political opponents had taught me some discretion.
The moment I no longer felt the ancient vampire’s Sanguis Vitam, though, I let rip.
“What do you mean, ‘No’?”
Hakan looked at me with silver-laced eyes and said, “It is late, hayatim. We should rest.”
“Don’t ‘hayatim’ me, Bahar!” I snapped. “There is no way I’m not going after my brother.”
He took a step toward me. It could’ve been called menacing, but somehow Hakan no longer menaced me.
“You know not of what you speak,” he said.
I matched him step for step until I was chest to chest with him. Glaring up into his mesmerising ice-blue eyes, I said, “And you don’t know me, Bey Bahar. I will not abandon my brother.”
“So much fire,” he murmured. “So much Light.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
He turned away and looked at the Hyrða, standing quietly, watching and listening to everything we said, in the corner of the room. Damn it! I’d forgotten Goran was there.
“The guest room is on the second floor,” Hakan advised him. “I suggest you rest. Come nightfall; we will hunt.”
What? Wait? I’d won that round? How?
Goran inclined his head and stepped out of the room on silent feet. Ediz had not come back in. I wondered if the Erbörü hunted. What did they eat? Little children?
I studied Hakan as he reached out and picked a glass of raki up off the tray. He downed the alcohol in one hit. Then lifted once again silver-laced eyes to connect with mine.
“We face two problems,” he said quietly. Hakan’s quiet was not a soft and alluring quiet. It was sensual and filled with delicious threat.
Perhaps to others, it would be something else, but to me, it was anticipation wrapped up in bloodlust, doused in sex. I’d always had a thing for powerful vampires. Growing up surrounded by so many it wasn’t a surprise.
I cocked my head, placed my hands on my hips and growled, “What problems?”
“Finding a suitable Mhachkay for starters.”
I blinked at him.
“You said no only a moment ago.”
“I did not say no to that.”
I studied him. He wore that vampire mask so many of them adopt as they get older. Hakan had been in stasis for five hundred years, but if that was the case, he was old when he was placed there. I opened myself up to his Sanguis Vitam. I let his blood life force roll over me, gauging its strength, its vintage so to speak. He was old, all right. Not old like the Ambrosia. But old like my father is.
To Norms, that would create an uncomfortable feeling; dating a guy the same age as your dad. But to vampyre it meant nothing. Age only a consideration if it brought enough power with it. Hakan had power and then some. As did the Mhachkay King.
“You’re his heir, aren’t you?” I said.
Hakan inclined his head in a single nod.
“The no was for that.”
He smiled. “You are astute, hayatim.” He sounded pleased as if he had not expected me to be his match in that regard. What had he thought the Champion would sire? An idiot?
I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him.
His smile widened.
“You should know,” he said in a purr, “you’re defiance only excites me.”
Vampires.
I uncrossed my arms and started to pace.
“I’ll bite,” I said, making him chuckle. Half-vampire I might be, but I was not born with any fangs to speak of. “Why don’t you want to assume the role of Mhachkay King?”
His smile faded, and I felt the room chill for its loss.
“My uncle and I have not seen eye to eye for centuries.”
And that would be centuries before they were imprisoned.
I turned and faced my entwined vampire and said, “Start talking. I want to know everything. I have that right.”
I’d picked him. I’d sided with him. His blood was entwined with mine. I had a right to know his history and what it meant for our future. What it might mean for my brother in the end.
Hakan looked at the armchair he’d vacated with longing and then looked down at his warrior garb, all smeared in blood. Mhachkay and Erbörü blood.
“Come, hayatim,” he said and held out a hand.
There was no one here to see him offer affection. No one to judge him or fool with an act. He held out his hand because he wanted me to take it.
I didn’t know exactly what entwining did to us, but I knew it wasn’t the same as a joining. My mother had gone into great - and sometimes embarrassing - detail about what to expect when we joined. She’d been blindsided by it when she’d been young; she was determined we wouldn’t be on reaching out twenty-fifth. And what she had described was not what I had experienced with Hakan.
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No heightened attraction. No undeniable need to touch. No vampire bite to claim possession. None of that.
Because I’d already felt it, longed for it. Wanted it with every fibre of my being.
I slipped my hand into my Savaşçı’s and let him lead me from the room. We climbed the stairs past the second floor and to the very top of the building. I was familiar with his bedroom. I’d visited it in a ribbon assisted Walk. I’d been inside it with Hakan when he’d brought me here from Auckland. I’d slept in it alone when he’d been in Faerie searching for my brother.
But this was the first time we both entered it with - hopefully - no chance of us being pulled away by some supernatural call. A shiver raced down my spine on that thought.
He bypassed the oversized bed with its dark wood and gauzy curtains and brightly coloured cushions and stepped into the attached bathroom. In short order, he had the large tiled bath filling with steaming water. Istanbul might have lacked some of the finer things of yesteryear, but Hakan Bahar had hot water.
I started to strip. My eyes for the water as it rose quickly inside the bathtub. Not that the bath could really be called a tub. It was huge. But then, Hakan was a big man. My eyes flicked to his body. He’d removed his scabbard and was working on the leather straps that crossed his muscular torso. I knew he was watching me and removing his clothing by rote.
The shiver turned into a liquified shudder, my body loosening and tightening at the same time, delicious anticipation making me wet and hot all of a sudden.
I watched as the leather straps were dropped to the floor and then he unfastened his warrior skirt. He wore little beneath the lower garment, and once that was removed, he wore nothing at all.
Goddess, he was magnificent. Beautiful. A marble sculpture depicting the perfect man.
My eyes lifted to his. His were all silver. Swirling and dancing, hunger of a sort shining brightly.
“Shower first,” he instructed, his voice lower than normal and husky.
I nodded my head and stepped under the spray in the nearby shower stall. In quick and efficient moves, Hakan washed the blood and dirt off, and then took my place doing the same to his glorious body. I had expected more, but he seemed in a hurry. And then when he helped me into the bath and turned my back to his chest, pulling me onto his lap so his arms could surround me, I realised he was in a hurry for this.
Full body contact without the urgency or distraction of battle grime and dust.
Slowly now, he started to lather my skin up with sweet smelling soap. Jasmine and fig and maybe lavender.
My body relaxed in evermore larger increments until I was a limp pile of flesh draped over broad thighs and a thick chest.
“The Mhachkay,” he said, his voice low and soft, “were once a powerful people. We ruled our little part of the world without interference or judgement. Our vampyre were warriors and scholars and artisans. The best the world had to offer. Visiting vampyre would come from leagues away just to see the sophistication and beauty the Mhachkay created. Ours was a noble world. An honourable one.”
He paused, concentrating on massaging my hands. He worked each finger individually, kneading the joints, smoothing the ligaments, rubbing the soap into the skin. I had never had anyone concentrate so fully on my fingers before. My hands were weapons. Capable of bringing harm or death to those who came against me. I had never thought they could receive such pleasure. Such comfort.
“Being sought after,” Hakan eventually said, “brought complications. At first, we welcomed them. A challenge, after all, is an opportunity to shine. More and more vampyre chose to live near us. On our borders and in some cases on our very land. We lowered our guard. We let them in. Some, such as the Craiovesti family, brought alliances and prestige amongst us. Political pull outside of our world should we require it.”
Craiovesti was the royal name of the vampyre my father had befriended not long after he had been Turned. He had lived in Wallachia, I’d been told. In Romania, so not inside the Mhachkay borders. But near enough to be a threat. From what my mother had said, Neagoe Basarb, a Craiovesti prince, was a diplomat and lover of the Renaissance. My father is the vampyre he is today because of that man.
“The Craiovesti,” Hakan continued, “were Iunctio vampyre. The council had no pull in our land at the time; we did not see them as a threat. At least, I did not. I enjoyed the prince’s company. I shared many interests with him.”
He’d known Neagoe Basarab. He’d known my father’s friend.
That meant, he’d undoubtedly known my father back then.
I wasn’t sure how to take that. My father’s history is steeped in heartache and loss. Not only for his human side but for those early years. Years spent in Wallachia learning politics, diplomacy and philosophy. Learning to be a refined vampire from the example set by Basarab. Papa did not speak of that time with Luc or I. He had with Mama, who had passed on what she could to us. But heartache still had its claws in my father’s chest.
Five hundred years of heartache.
“I was enamoured with his world,” Hakan murmured, moving on to massaging my wrists and arms. “I spent more time in Wallachia than I did in my own country. I had lowered my guard. When I finally returned, summoned by my uncle and father for some inconsequential thing, I found an Empire corrupted by greed and lust. A snake had made its home in our bed.”
His hands never stopped moving. His voice never changed in pitch. But I got the impression that this was hard for him. That he was using the connection of touching my body to ground himself. That, not unlike a kindred joining, Hakan felt compelled to touch me right then.
“My uncle,” Hakan said, “worked with the Sultan willingly, seeking power and expansion, much like the human did. The Mhachkay had never needed more land than they had, but my uncle chose expansion over honour, conquer over friendship, war over diplomacy. I was no longer his man. I left, thinking to distance myself. I turned my back on my people, on my ancestral home, and in doing so on my friend.”
He was silent for a moment. His hands were moving to my shoulders, to my collarbone, to the artery that pulsed in time with his twin hearts on my neck.
“They invaded Wallachia while I was gone,” he whispered. “Had I returned to the Craiovesti Court and warned them, they may have been prepared. As it was, they saw the Mhachkay standard and opened their gates to a horde.”
Invaders from the Ottoman Empire had killed Neagoe Basarb. My mother had told me that. Those invaders had been the Mhachkay. No wonder my father hated them.
“Our Kral,” Hakan said in a low growl, “thought himself above all other vampyre. Above the Iunctio. He thought wrong. They retaliated. And their power far outstripped ours. They had Nosferatin. We had long ago lost our kan büyülü. Our Entwined. We were at a disadvantage, but still, my uncle fought. The battle lasted years. In the end, sheer stubbornness and willpower kept the Mhachkay going. In order to find a resolution that saved face for both sides, the Iunctio struck a bargain. Our willing imprisonment for the promise of the first Entwined to be born next.”
Dear Goddess. Had my father known when we’d been born? Had he known what we were and what it would mean? The return of the Mhachkay. The vampyre group responsible for gifting his friend the final death. How had he reconciled his love for his children and the fate they would one day bring?
It explained so much. His strictness growing up. The Dream Visits where he allowed himself to love us. The public displays of Champion toughness. The fact that he, along with the Ambrosia and the Enforcer, had tried to hide our enchanted blood.
How he’d let me go with Hakan, a Mhachkay prince, instead of forcing the joining with Alain in the end.
It had been too easy; his acquiescence. He’d had no choice. An accord had been made. He was honour bound as the current Champion to adhere to it. Luc was the firstborn Blood Enchanted, the firstborn due the Mhachkay as Entwined. But I was a chance to mend bridges. Or to place an asset inside their borders and hope I would be e
verything he had trained me to be in the end.
My father had placed his trust in me. He had placed Luc’s life in my hands. He’d done the one thing I had never expected him ever to do; let me go so I could be what I needed, what he’d taught me, to be.
Hakan stroked a finger over my neck. My pulse jumped. He leaned forward and inhaled my scent.
“I was imprisoned with them,” he murmured against my slick skin. “I had not raised arms against the Iunctio, but I was a Mhachkay prince. And I had done nothing to dissuade my uncle. To stop his relentless attacks.”
Guilty by association. He hadn’t fired the gun, but he’d stood by and watched the bullets fly.
I understood the guilt he carried. I felt it keenly when I thought of Travis. This was why he did not want to be Kral. The Mhachkay he’d been imprisoned with were no longer his kin.
I could have offered platitudes; soothed his ego with empty words. Guilt is guilt. Earned or not, it has a right to be there. I would not begrudge him his sins. I had too many of my own to battle.
“You said we face two problems,” I murmured.
He leaned forward and kissed the curve of my neck.
“Finding a suitable Mhachkay for your brother,” he whispered against the goosebumps that appeared.
“Mmhmm,” I managed.
“And the fact my uncle thinks you are the firstborn.”
I didn’t see that as a problem. It took the pressure off Luc, hopefully, long enough for us to reach him and Alain first. I turned in Hakan’s arms and faced him.
“So?”
“So, hayatim,” he said, brow arched, “we are not kindred. He could steal you and entwine your blood with his.”
Shit.
5
Still Unexplained
Kindred joinings are for life. The Nosferatu’s or the Nosferatin’s life. Whichever meets the final death first. Symbiotic their relationship, but also once joined no vampire can tear them apart.
And OK, there were exceptions. Bizarre and magical exceptions. And my mother’s and father’s original kindred joining had fallen into that category. But on the whole, once you joined with a kindred Nosferatu, you were joined for eternal life.
Blood Enthralled (Blood Enchanted, Book Three): A Vampire Hunter Paranormal Romance Series Page 4