by Ashley Ladd
“I’m almost two thousand years old.” Genevieve smiled as if proud of her incredible age. “And now, like all of our clan, my child, you shall know the blessings of eternity.”
“Blessed be,” the crowd surrounding them chanted in harmony, freaking her out.
The press of “the family” brought Chloe’s claustrophobia to the forefront again and she tried to tamp it down before it incapacitated her. Could vampires smell fear? Since Luke had turned into a wolf on more than one occasion, she had no doubt his senses were highly refined. Her own, in fact, seemed to be a thousand times heightened since her reawakening.
Genevieve hugged her warmly, her long, silky curls tickling Chloe’s arm. “Are you not overjoyed with your newfound eternity? To be reunited with your lifemate? We shall make it official in a grand celebration such as you have never seen. It will be so sumptuous that earthly kings and queens will envy your ceremony.”
Married? Her mind spun dizzily in this crazy vortex.
A ruckus broke the silence, and the crowds parted to reveal a red-faced, fuming Gerald. “Your Majesty,” Gerald said bowing low before her. His eyes glittered dangerously when he straightened to his full height. “May I lodge a formal protest at this union? This young woman has been promised to me. She is to be my lifemate.”
Horrified and disgusted, Chloe’s throat constricted. Anger tingled through her. He was delusional. “I broke our engagement and told you to stay away from me.”
“Perhaps the trauma of death and rebirth has erased some of your memories.” Genevieve looked from Gerald to Chloe as if questioning both of them.
Luke stepped forward, his gaze narrowed on his opponent. “I can vouch for Chloe. I witnessed the end of their engagement. He speaks lies.”
“What have you to say for yourself? A lapse in memory, perchance?” Genevieve pinned her steady gaze on Gerald.
Gerald stood up straighter and lifted his pointy chin haughtily. “My maker, Anika, promised Chloe as my lifemate in exchange for my allegiance.”
Chloe was disgusted that even Gerald would sink so low. Bile bubbled in her throat. She wanted to spit on him. “I decide who will be my lifemate, and it is not you.”
Luke’s chest puffed out as he stepped up to stand by her side.
With a disdainful sideways glance at the former cop, she wrinkled her nose. “Nor will it be you. I do not wish to be the property of any man. I didn’t choose this life.”
Luke bristled beside her, the heat of his anger seeping into her.
A frown marred Genevieve’s delicate features and she drew herself up imperially. “Nor did I choose this life, but I must adhere to its principles, as shall you. You may choose not to take either of these men as a lifemate, nor any man if that is your preference, but you will obey our laws, and you will respect our family.”
Sensing that Genevieve felt disrespected, Chloe cursed herself. She couldn’t afford to make more enemies or bring more trouble upon her head. Bowing as she’d just seen the others do, she humbled herself. “Please forgive me. This situation has been most distressing to me.”
Luke spoke up as she opened her mouth again, cutting her off. “Forgive her, Your Majesty. She is new to our family and does not yet know our ways.”
Seething, Chloe leashed her rising temper with great difficulty. Luke had no right to speak for her. He never had, even when she’d worn his engagement ring. “With all due respect, Your Majesty, I am a new convert to your way of life, and I do not know your ways. I do, however, wish to speak for myself if that is permissible.”
You are in a new world. Luke’s thoughts barraged her head. It would be wise to observe and learn before voicing your opinions so forcefully. Tread carefully, my love.
Wild, she hissed at him, her fangs piercing her gums, her talons lengthening. Her human self was being subjugated by the beast and she welcomed it. The adrenaline surging through her veins intoxicated her. She was drunk on her newfound powers. I don’t need your help, Lukas, she shot back telepathically.
On the contrary, you’re in dire need of it. There is much to this world that does not meet the eye. Much danger lurks here, both within and outside of the family.
She was looking at him. Luke was a major danger to her heart. She loved him but she couldn’t trust him. Look where loving him had led her!
Her gaze drank in the plush manor, delineated by flickering candlelight, and dark, gothic décor. Ornate, bejeweled wine goblets graced the mantles. Eyes seemed to rove from the gilt-framed portraits, ever watchful. Sumptuous though it might be, she did not want to squander eternity in this shrine to darkness and devastation. She’d always planned to spend it in the luminosity of love and joy.
“We will know love and joy,” Luke promised, grazing the back of her arm with his fingertips. “Give me a chance. Let me prove myself to you.”
He had proven himself to her. He had stolen her eternal soul from her and bestowed eternal damnation upon her head. He had introduced her to this obscure, forbidden world from which there was no escape. Everlasting hell, misery, and torment.
“You need to give us a chance. We are not the monsters you believe us to be.” Sadness tinged the conviction in Genevieve’s voice. “It is unfortunate that Anika exacted such vicious revenge upon you. We are not all like her. We are a gracious, cultured civilization.”
Reverted to the dark ages where it was supposedly acceptable to slaughter enemies without remorse. Where women were chattels and had no rights in the violent, male-dominated world. She was not a slave or a possession to be married off to seal a bargain, despite Gerald and Anika’s unholy covenant. She was not a prize as Luke and Gerald seemed to believe, to be awarded to the highest bidder, or the winning contestant. If she truly had to spend eternity in this manner, surely she could take her time in choosing a lifemate, although she sincerely doubted she would find a vampire that would meet her strict specifications for a husband. The rebirth, the essence of the culture itself, changed people, ripped out their souls, and turned them into monsters. Whereas once Luke had been a wonderful man, he had become a murderer. Her murderer.
“Anika took your life. I gave you new life,” Luke whispered huskily behind her ear, his warm breath unwelcomely seductive. “A gloriously eternal life.”
They could argue this forevermore and she felt certain they would remain at an impasse. “There’s nothing glorious about this cursed existence,” she ground out between gritted teeth, ashamed of what she had become. Ignominious far better described it.
Genevieve scowled. “Enough! You two argue like spoiled children. I will not have our family subjected to your petty squabbles.” She turned to Chloe. “As your maker, he deserves your respect.”
Respect was the last thing she owed her maker. So now he had a warped demigod complex? He created evil anti-souls. He had been a policeman in his former life. Was there no trace of that respectable Luke left? The Luke that lived to protect and help people?
Still, she felt chastised enough to drop her gaze. Chastised and infuriated was not a pleasant combination, like when a cold front clashed head on with a heat wave, a hurricane brewed. And brother, the mother of all hurricanes was swirling in her stomach ready to wreak havoc and devastation when it hit landfall.
Genevieve waved the others away with a flick of her slender wrist. “Please leave us. This is none of your concern.”
Only Gerald hung back, his expression stormy.
Genevieve glared at Gerald. “I shall call for you when I need you.”
“With all due deference,” Gerald said, going down on bended knee. “I should be party to this discussion. I should be present when Chloe’s fate is decided.”
Chloe growled, wanting to rip out his throat, feeling less and less human with each new aggravation. Murderous rage battled inside her. Gerald had even less right than Luke to interfere in her life. Afterlife, she reminded herself with a grimace. “With all respect, my queen,” Chloe said with as steady of a voice as she could muster. “I do not want
Gerald meddling in my affairs. I don’t have any desire to associate with him. I highly object to his presence.” She highly objected to his existence, and did not want him as a member of her family.
A triumphant gleam lit Luke’s silvery eyes and he squared his shoulders making Chloe long to elbow him swiftly in his solar plexus. To her chagrin, Luke backed away to a safe distance, grinning unabashedly, as if he’d just won this round.
Gerald’s gray face pinched, making him look a hundred years older. “She’s still in shock. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. I was a doctor, I know.”
Chloe dug her talons into her palms to keep from slashing his face. “I was a doctor, so I know when I’m coherent or not, and I’m in my right mind.” At least as right as she was likely to be with all these wildly unnerving sensations roiling through her.
“Pray tell, leave us. This is none of your concern.” Genevieve snapped her fingers high in the air. When Gerald opened his mouth to protest, the queen whirled on him, her forehead protruding ominously, her fangs bared. “No more arguing will be tolerated! Go now before you are severely punished. Blessed be.”
Gerald’s eyes widened comically, and he gulped. He bowed out of the room as he walked backwards. “Yes, Your Majesty”
You’ve made a powerful enemy, Gerald’s voice echoed in her mind as he skulked into the shadows like the rat he was.
Wonderful! Her first day in the afterlife and she’d already made someone’s hit list. She had escaped the clutches of one mortal enemy, just to have another one take her place.
“I will leave you in your maker’s capable hands. You could do far worse than to choose him as a lifemate. It is rare to find a man, vampire or otherwise, who loves you with all his heart and soul. Do not waste such a precious gift.”
The jury was still out. But Luke wasn’t the only one on her mind. “Gerald just threatened me…”
“I’ll make it clear that he is to leave you alone.”
And if he didn’t?
Genevieve frowned. “Then he’ll be severely reprimanded. Do not worry anymore about that one. I will take care of it.” Genevieve swept from the room silently, her gown swishing around her ankles.
Good. She wouldn’t.
But the issue of their souls still disturbed her. “How can you people bandy about the term soul so loosely?”
Luke regarded her quizzically. “Your soul means a lot to you.”
Of course. “A soul is a person’s essence. It’s who she is.”
“Then by your own definition, you still have it.”
Stymied by his glib assessment, she shook her head and looked heavenward. “This is serious. We are the antithesis of good. We are evil personified.”
Luke’s lips twisted into a deep frown. He swaggered over to her and settled his hands heavily on her shoulders, his fingers biting into her flesh. Glowering down at her, he said forcefully, “I am not evil. You are not evil. Genevieve is not evil.”
“Anika? Gerald?” Surely, he couldn’t argue with that. She wasn’t sure which one of the two made her shudder worse. She was just relieved neither would bother her again.
“They were always evil, far before their rebirth. Becoming a vampire had nothing to do with making them wicked, vile creatures.” His gazed bored into hers. “Does being a carnivore make one evil?”
“To the prey, yes.” She shivered, remembering the nightmarish episode when Anika fed off her. Sheer terror threatened to envelop her again, and only the reminder that the witch was dead and turned to ash, kept her from trembling beneath Luke’s hands.
“In essence? Remember, that would make humans just as evil as vampires if you say yes.”
He was trying to lay a trap and she wasn’t going to fall for it. “It’s one thing to kill the mortal body for sustenance, but to kill the immortal soul.”
Luke dragged her into his arms and sealed her mouth with a searing kiss. His tongue dueled with hers until her bones felt like they were melting.
After what felt like an eternity, he pulled away and murmured against her lips, “Does that feel soulless? What makes you believe we have no soul?”
“That’s what all the legends say…” Breathless, her words came out ragged and stilted.
“And you believe fairy tales? As a physician, do you still bleed your patients with leeches? Do you still put butter on burns?”
She saw where he was leading and pursed her still burning lips. Perhaps she had better examine all angles more in depth. Perhaps there was hope.
* * * * *
Sirens blared, making Chloe’s pulse leap.
Beside her, Luke glowered, tensing.
Genevieve’s expression sobered instantly, her ebony eyes narrowing. “The werecats are attacking again. Everybody to your stations.”
Stations? Had she joined the vampires or the army?
Genevieve’s gaze pierced Luke. “She will be in your charge. Keep her safe.”
“Yes, milady.” Luke clasped Chloe’s elbow between his firm fingers. “That goes without saying.”
When Luke gazed deeply into her eyes, warm tingles shuddered down Chloe’s spine.
Lions roared. Or were they tigers or leopards?
No, they were an unholy cross between a human and jaguar, an earsplitting, spine-tingling screech that penetrated her very bones, propelling her to take flight. “Just what is a ‘werecat’?” she whispered to Luke as he pulled her behind him.
An enormous hairy, horrifying beast pounced in front of them, claws unsheathed, saliva dripping from its colossal fangs. Sinewy and lithe, the creature towered over them, snarling.
Luke shoved her behind him as his fangs burst from his gums and growls arose from his throat. “Watch my back. They usually attack in packs.”
She gulped. Packs? “How do we fight them?”
“Fight to kill.”
She couldn’t kill. She had taken the Hippocratic oath to preserve and save lives.
“They’re not human,” Luke answered her thoughts again.
“Life is life.”
“Then think about our lives. It’s us or them.”
When the creature let out a ferocious roar and swiped its deadly paw across Luke’s torso, shredding his chest, knocking him to the ground at her feet, she gasped, her heart in her throat. “Lukas!” She started to fall to her knees by him to attend him, when the fiend opened its huge maw to swallow her.
“Duck.” Luke’s breath came out in ragged pants, as he lay in a fetal position, holding his chest.
Chloe tucked and rolled just out of the monster’s reach its repugnant breath gagging her. “What do we do now?” She was in desperate need of basic training.
Had she come into the clan at an incredibly bad time? Or was this a typical day in the life of a vampire? Either way, she didn’t feel especially welcome.
Luke kicked the creature’s legs out from under it, making it crash thunderously to the ground. He struggled to his feet, his eyes dilated alarmingly. Yanking Chloe unceremoniously behind him, he dragged her from the trashed great room where the rest of the family was involved in vicious hand-to-hand combat, their foreheads bulging grotesquely, their cheekbones gruesomely pronounced, and their fangs and fingers bloodied. Luke, too, resembled his brethren, barely recognizable as the man she’d loved.
Did she look just as revolting?
“Shouldn’t we stay and help them?” She hung back, tearing her arm from his grip.
“Noble sentiment, but you heard the queen. She ordered me to protect you.” Luke scooped her into his arms against his feverish chest and slipped into the shadows. “You’re too new in the ways to survive such battle.”
“Teach me.” She ached to help her new family, only vaguely aware that this was a foreign emotion.
“I shall, but this is not the time.”
“I didn’t think vampires could die unless they were stabbed in the heart by a stake.” She would have added “or face sunlight”, but she already knew that to be a fallacy. “I didn’t
see any stakes.”
“We can also die from beheading.”
Horrific visions of bloodied severed heads assaulted her, making her stomach lurch. She had definitely slipped into the Dark Ages. “They didn’t carry any knives or swords.”
“They have teeth…and bare hands. They can rip our heads off with their brute strength. Beware at all times.”
Correction. She had tumbled into prehistoric times. At this point, she wouldn’t be surprised if a T-Rex attacked them. She quaked with pure, unadulterated disgust.
“Is your life always like this?” Was it a constant battle to survive? An eternity of fighting and death? This far surpassed her worst nightmare.
“Not always.”
Chloe shuddered uncontrollably. That implied events like the werecat attacks and turning into venomous snakes happened frequently
Perplexed, she suddenly noticed that instead of taking her out the ground level exit, Luke had carried her back to the dungeon where she had been crucified, where she had died. Horrified at the sight of the bloody cross, she averted her gaze. “Where are we going? I didn’t think the manor was safe.”
“You’ll see. The enemy will have guards posted outside the doors. It would be deadly to think we could just walk out unscathed.” Luke had an advantage over her. Not only had he been a vampire longer, but he had his police background to hone his senses and sharpen his survival instincts whereas she came from the opposite spectrum of being a healer, not a murderess. In this scary new world, she could see that her training would not merely be a hindrance, but deadly.
“So what do we do?” Luke could spread himself on the night winds and fly away in the form of a bird. She had no inkling of how to accomplish such a miraculous feat. Was this a technique he could teach her in a few moments? She highly doubted it.
Luke set her on her feet, the loss of his warmth immediately chilling her. He crept up to a moonlit window, and cautiously peeked out. “We go out the underground tunnels, using our secret escape route after I make sure the enemy is not lurking about.”
Desperate to leave the scene of her death, Chloe nodded. Shivering despite the warm night, she rubbed the gooseflesh on her arms. She willed him to go forward so they could make their safe escape, yet when he crept into the shadowy corridor with great stealth, worry consumed her.