by Kristie Cook
She held her arm over Niko’s mouth, forcing him to take her blood. He shook his head, fighting it, and she held him still with her free hand.
“Stop, Niko. You’re just making a mess.”
He tried to push her arm away but she kept it tight against his mouth. Then, something changed in him and he grabbed onto her arm, pulling it to him instead of pushing. He sucked heartily and with each swallow, she felt his energy strengthen. Eventually, instead of forcing him to drink, she had to force him to stop.
“I’m sorry,” he said, wiping his mouth. “But you taste delightful.”
Cassandra didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Before she could do anything, he pulled her head down to his and delivered her a kiss that was so deep, so sensuous, so loving, it could almost make up for all the kisses they’d missed since he’d left. She didn’t remember his lips feeling so soft but firm, his mouth tasting so deliciously sweet, his touch delivering such heat. He’d always excited her easily, but now the feelings were multiplied a thousand times. Tears streamed down her face as they continued kissing.
“I can’t believe you’re truly here,” she said when they finally broke apart for a breath. “Alive. In my arms again.”
His lips turned into a sad smile. “Not exactly alive. Definitely not the same.”
She nodded and returned his smile. “I know. Father has told me everything.”
His brow furrowed for a moment and then the smile deepened, reaching his eyes. “You were right about God. I was wrong, about Zeus and the others. I learned the hard way, seeing real demons with my own eyes.” Then he frowned and sadness filled his face again. “But there is another … they called him their lord … they say my soul is his. I am damned to Hades … I mean, to Hell.”
Cassandra shook her head. “No, Niko. Father has told me everything. You can still be good. You can still go to Heaven. You just have to choose.”
She told him the whole story, from Jordan and Eris’s potion to her visit with Father the Angel to leading him back to goodness. Sharing it with him helped her own mind to accept it all, although her heart and soul had affirmed it the moment she saw her husband again and wanted nothing but to save him. She had become something more than human, but it was good. And she had a purpose to fulfill.
“There are others like me—changed against their will,” Niko said. “If what you say is true … you can help them?”
“Just as I have with you. I suppose that is what I am meant to do. Why I am on this Earth.”
She let out a sigh mixed with resignation and frustration. Although she had accepted it completely, she still didn’t know how she would accomplish this task she’d been given.
Chapter 16
Jordan leaned his elbows on the thick slab of stone they used as a table and pressed his forehead against his hands. His nostrils flared as he breathed deeply, trying to control his temper.
“She didn’t give either of you the spell?” he asked through clenched teeth.
Neither Deimos nor Inga answered him at first.
His son had avoided him for weeks, blaming him for the death of Eris. Jordan vaguely remembered what it was like to lose a mother, but he thought his son was beyond those weak emotions. Because he wasn’t, Jordan wanted little do with him right now. He’d been sickened and frustrated with his own grief for Eris; he didn’t need another reminder staring him in the face.
Inga had come back just this morning, responding immediately to his summons.
“I hadn’t talked to her for years,” she finally said. “You both kept me out of this, remember? You said my magick wasn’t good enough for you.”
Jordan responded with a snarl. “I thought you at least knew something. Had some kind of value.”
Inga’s only answer was a pout.
“She refused to tell me everything,” Deimos said. “I know all but one ingredient and I don’t know the incantation. But Father, you really do need to go. You’ve ignored the Ancients’ summons long enough.”
“I know!” Jordan growled. He slammed his fist onto the table, cracking the stone in half and making Inga yelp.
He’d avoided answering the Ancients for two days, which was two days too long. The pain in his gut from the magickal pull had become relentless. When he answered their summons, though, he wanted to be able to request more blood from Zardok. But if the old vampyre knew they couldn’t recreate the potion, he’d never give it. He was running out of time. If he waited much longer, the agony would overcome even him.
Jordan felt a small hand on his shoulder. He looked over at Inga who looked back at him with wide blue eyes.
“What?” he demanded.
“Let me take care of you before you go,” she said. With a snort of disgust, or perhaps jealousy, Deimos left the house.
The thought of bedding Inga was enticing—she’d yet to lose her youthful looks and sumptuous body—but Jordan didn’t want everything that came with it.
“Why’d you even come here?” he asked. “You knew what I wanted and you didn’t have it. Why are you bothering me?”
She blinked and he watched as her throat worked to swallow.
“With Eris gone … ” she started and stammered. “I mean … I thought … I love you, Jordan. I just want to be with you. That’s all I ever wanted.”
Exactly what he didn’t want. Love. What a deception. Nobody truly loved. It was just a bothersome word, full of dishonesty that often fooled the one using the word as much as the one hearing it. It destroyed more often than not, wreaking havoc on people’s lives. He wondered if His Lord had created this word.
Inga pushed her hand across his back and to his other shoulder and wrapped her other arm across his front, embracing him. She leaned in to press her lips against his cheek, a soft touch of tenderness, not passion. Part of him ached for her, the part that felt her soft breasts rubbing against his bicep. No, not her. He craved almost any woman at this point. But definitely not her and all she would expect from him. He shoved her aside, so hard she fell to the floor.
She looked up at him, her eyes watery and pleading. “I will do anything for you, Jordan. There are many ways I can help you. Whatever you need. Whenever you need it. I may not be as magickally powerful as Eris, but—”
“Exactly. I have no need for you. Be gone, woman!”
She flinched and her lower lip trembled. He thought he would hit her if she cried, but she disappeared just as the first tear fell. With an angry exhale, Jordan pulled himself together before flashing north.
***
Jordan entered the dark, fire-lit room, prepared with an argument for Zardok. He wasn’t prepared, however, for the number of people in the circular cavern—every throne was filled and more stood by the fires. One of the cloaked figures rose from a throne and dropped his hood. Eris’s father. Jordan sucked his breath. He’d forgotten about him.
“Did she tell you the incantation?” Jordan blurted, too excited to control himself. Surely she’d shared it with her father and the sorcerer was powerful enough to make it work … unless, for some reason, he mourned his daughter’s death. Jordan didn’t think it possible, but he’d stopped trying to figure out the Ancients a long time ago.
“Of course not,” the sorcerer sneered. “She was smart enough to know sharing it would make her dispensable. Unfortunately, she wasn’t smart enough to overcome her own vanity. Stupid woman, drinking what she knew would poison her.”
“Do you plan to help me recreate it?” Jordan asked.
“We already have our best witches working on it.”
Jordan’s eyes widened and his nostrils flared. He didn’t like the idea of others working on his potion.
“You, Jordan, have more important things to worry about,” Zardok said from his throne. He rose, pushing the naked brunette off his lap and wiping his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. She slipped into the shadows and a dark shape licked the blood trickling down her breast. “Your sister.”
Jordan’s eyes snapped back to Zardok. �
��Yes. I thought I would give her time, let the potion take full effect, then retrieve her.”
The vampyre chuckled. “Retrieve her? I do not think you understand the gravity of the situation.”
“You won’t be able to retrieve her,” the sorcerer said. “She will never be ours. The Angels have permanently tainted her.”
Jordan pressed his lips together. He’d come to realize this already, but he’d been holding onto the hope that the Daemoni qualities would overpower whatever the Angels did to her.
“They have claimed her and her descendants,” Zardok added. “And now we have a problem. It’s a small one right now, but if you don’t do something about it, it will grow. And it’s your problem, Jordan.”
Jordan peered at him and lifted an eyebrow in question.
“We are losing our own to her,” Zardok said.
Growls and hisses sounded around the room. Jordan’s eyes darted to Zardok’s face.
“She’s converting your new troops. She’s taken Niko back. He’s brought her more. We’re losing their souls, Jordan,” Zardok said. “You must stop her.”
Anger welled in Jordan’s chest, but he just nodded. “I can take care of it. I just need a couple of men.”
“You can choose the men you take, except for Deimos,” the sorcerer said. “If you fail, we’ll still have him.”
“I won’t fail.”
“You should hope not,” Zardok said. “Because if she and hers don’t kill you, we will.”
“I said I can take care of it,” Jordan growled. “She’s just my sister. I am still far more powerful than she is.”
“So be it,” Zardok said. “Take care of it. Even if it means killing her.”
“Of course,” Jordan said with a slight bow to the Ancients.
He had no problem making the promise—he secretly clutched to the hope that his sister could still be useful to him, but if not, and if she was any threat to his future, he would kill her. How, he wasn’t sure. After all, his main intent with the potion was immortality. He just hoped that part hadn’t taken effect in her yet.
First, he had to find her. Which became more difficult than he expected.
Chapter 17
Cassandra sat on a dead log with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. She peeked to her side to ensure Andronika still slept, even with everyone’s voices growing louder. She now had six others in the little group Father had told her to create—Niko, two other vampyres, two werewolves and a witch who had just joined them about a month ago. Definitely not an army. Even if she converted a hundred more, she wanted to avoid fighting the Daemoni at all costs. She couldn’t put her growing family—she loved them nearly as much as she loved her daughter—at risk. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what they wanted to do.
“We’ve been running from your brother for nearly two seasons,” Niko said. “We have more numbers now and we’re all trained warriors. We can fight them, Cassandra.”
“I don’t want to fight them,” she said for the fifth time tonight.
He’d been making this same plea to her for a while now. Being on the run was, admittedly, tiresome. All she really wanted to do was vanish onto one of those little islands in the sea, where Jordan could never find them. But they told her they could never truly disappear from him. He’d always find them. At least, until they had a warlock or more mages on their side to produce a strong enough shield, whatever that was.
“This cat-and-mouse game has to end sometime,” said Michael, a red-headed vampyre. “We should end it our way. We should go on the offensive.”
The others murmured in agreement. She knew he was probably right. She wasn’t trained for battle, except for what they’d been teaching her, but they were. They would know how to plan and execute an attack on Jordan. If they went on the offensive, they could better control the situation and she might still have a chance to end this peaceably, but if Jordan found them first, her chances for that would diminish drastically.
“Jordan only ever has two others with him. We can easily take him down,” Niko said.
“He only ever has two with him, but he can summon hundreds if he needs to,” said Inga, their most recent addition.
And that’s exactly what frightened Cassandra and why they kept at this same argument. She refused to take the chance of losing lives to Jordan and his minions.
“What if we devise a plan that prevents him from summoning any others?” Michael asked. “We could ambush him and he’d never have a chance.”
This piqued Cassandra’s curiosity. She finally raised her head and peered at the vampyre. “Do you have a plan that would work? One with no bloodshed?”
Michael squirmed. She didn’t know if it was her requirement or just that she’d said “blood.” The vampyres seemed to have adapted to their new diet of only animal blood—their solution to prevent them from harming humans—but they didn’t particularly like it. They said the difference was like stale bread and water compared to fresh beef and wine, in human terms.
The werewolves didn’t complain as much. Their diets had always consisted primarily of animal meat, except at the full moon. Their hardest struggle came then, when the call of the wild overcame their humanity. The vampyres had to restrain them all night long as they whined, growled and snapped, trying to free themselves to hunt down a human. For those three days of every moon cycle, Cassandra had to take Andronika far away and keep her hidden. Niko said the Weres had been easier to control last month. They all hoped they would eventually lose that wildness as their commitment to Cassandra and this life deepened.
“Well?” she asked Michael.
“Cassandra, my love,” Niko said, answering for his vampyre-brother, “we can’t guarantee that.”
She stood. “Then this conversation is over. Again. I will not risk any of your lives. We are not large enough or strong enough yet.”
She turned and headed to Andronika’s side to join her in slumber, ignoring the rumbles of the others. She just didn’t understand how they could be so anxious to go into battle.
“Cassandra,” Niko’s voice yelled in her mind. It was the only way he could grab her attention. She didn’t particularly enjoy the ability to hear their thoughts, feeling it an invasion of their privacy, so she kept her mind closed to them. They had to yell her name for her to hear, just as Niko did again. She froze. “You said your father called this an army. He said you would have to lead this army and fight. Battle means bloodshed. You must realize that.”
This is not an army. This is a small group of battered people. We cannot take on Jordan and all of his troops! I won’t risk it. Not yet.
“If we come up with a foolproof ambush? You know we have to end this. Let’s do it our way.”
She didn’t think it possible. Jordan was too cunning to fool for long. She’d been amazed they’d been able to stay out of his reach thus far. Which was why they did need a better plan, one that required confronting him and possibly ending his relentless chase once and for all.
She sighed. You know what I want, Niko. You come up with a way that keeps any of us from getting hurt and allows me to talk to Jordan and I will consider it.
She possessed what Niko called the “power of persuasion”—another gift from the Angels—and had developed it by converting the others. If she could use it to persuade her brother that she’d been right all along and he could still be good if he wanted to be, then she could bring him to her side and help him save his soul. She just needed to accomplish this without losing lives.
Chapter 18
Jordan sniffed the air. His nostrils flared. A smile danced on his lips. He looked at Blasius, his massive companion, and the vampyre narrowed his dark eyes and nodded. Silently, the two made their way toward the scents. Jordan found it nearly impossible to control the excitement surging through his body. After months of searching and chasing, only to come up empty-handed at the last second, they finally had the group trapped in a narrow crevice at the base of a mountain. Why had they stopped
there of all places, such an easy place to be ensnared? He understood when he heard their conversation and his mouth stretched into a teeth-baring grin. He motioned to Blasius to stop.
“We’ve had enough, Niko,” a man shouted. “This is no way to live!”
“It just takes time to adjust,” Niko’s familiar voice argued.
“We don’t want to adjust,” said a woman. “Why would you force us into this? We should have never trusted you.”
“Please,” Niko begged. “Please give it a chance. Cassandra can help—”
“Cassandra is the problem,” the first voice interrupted. “All of her rules and requirements. No human blood? How are we supposed to survive like this? Don’t tell me animal blood satisfies you. Don’t tell me you don’t still thirst. We’re losing our strength because of it. We’re vampyres, Niko! It’s only natural to drink from humans. That’s what we’re created for!”
Jordan’s grin spread wider. He had taught them so well the art of conniving and deception. He should have never doubted their loyalty. Glad to have them back, he took this as his cue. He signaled Blasius and they sped to the mouth of the crevice, effectively cornering the group of four—two vampyres and two werewolves. He was disappointed not to have Cassandra, but he was already working on that. She would join them shortly.
“You are right, Faiz,” Jordan said, eyeing the black-haired vampyre. He’d been one of Jordan’s more recent favorites. “That is what you were created for. And if that is what you want, we shall have you a human shortly. I’m sure you are dying of thirst.”
Faiz’s tongue slid along his lips as he nodded. “We came to her for you, but we cannot stand it any longer.”
“You have done a fine job. You will be rewarded. As for you, Niko … ” Jordan flashed, appearing behind his brother-in-law and forcing him to his knees with a shove to his shoulder. “You are the cause of all this?”