Blood Deep

by Sharon Page

  “N-no,” she said shakily.

  “A lie.” He sat up, and his face showed regret. “Blackthorne’s dungeons are littered with lace torn from ladies clothing, corset laces, and lost hair pins, angel.”

  She felt as though punched in the chest. “I don’t believe you.”

  “There are some mortal men who are much more wicked than vampires. Come with me. See for yourself.”

  “I’m half undressed.” Again, she spoke without pause, without sense. Why remind him?

  Zayan held up his cloak, and with a quick flick of his hand, it flew through the air, settled on her shoulders, and closed around her at the front. He led her to the end of the corridor, to a narrow, winding stair that plunged into darkness. She swallowed hard. He could see in the dark, but she could not.

  “I don’t wish to see Blackthorne’s dungeons.”

  “Don’t disappoint me, Miranda. I believe you are courageous enough to face anything.”

  She knew she had to be. It was just that she had one light in her life—Blackthorne’s love. She could never have him, but she did not want to extinguish that, too, and be left with nothing.

  8

  Dungeons

  In flickering candlelight, Zayan pulled a whip down from its hook upon the wall and threw it to an octagonal table of wrought iron that stood in the center of the dungeon. He looked to her, his silvery eyes speaking volumes of sympathy, but Miranda was too stunned to find words.

  She had never seen such things.

  The dungeons consisted of three cells cut into the hillside rock. A large oak door stood open on each cell. Iron shackles hung off the walls and ceilings. Benches of odd configurations sat in the corners. She had no idea how a human body would fit on the odd seats and strange leather pads, and she was certain that half were intended to thrust a person’s buttocks into the air.

  There were more than scraps of women’s clothing and scattered pins, there were journals complete with carefully rendered illustrations. The pictures had been annotated. She recognized the hand from the letters she had received. These were Blackthorne’s books. In them, he’d sketched his plans of what he intended to do with his female prisoners, adding his notes on what had worked and what had not, and how to make his tortures more arousing.

  She dropped one of the books to the table. She was not certain what she felt. Horror. Disappointment. And after her erotic adventure with Lukos where he had been tied up, a sense of understanding that unnerved her.

  She was stunned. But after what she had revealed as her fantasies, did she have any right to judge?

  Zayan stepped in front of her. “You see, angel.” His voice was infinitely gentle. “He would have hurt you more than I ever would.”

  Miranda crossed her arms over her chest. Anger boiled, and she wanted to take up the whip and lash it at the walls. “You would happily hurt me. You would drain my blood, and the only reason you haven’t is that I have something you want.” She was alone now—utterly alone. She could not go back to her brother and his family, or Aunt Eugenia—not without putting them at risk. All she’d had were dreams and fantasies of Blackthorne. Fantasies of love and marriage. Of hope. That’s what he had been for her—hope she could have a normal woman’s life. But she couldn’t. Not here. Not anymore. It appeared all the dark, scandalous rumors about Blackthorne were true.

  She shuddered as she looked around the dungeon. This did not arouse her. It made her sad.

  Had Blackthorne sensed, even in her letters, that she was not normal? Was that what had drawn him to her? Or had it been that he’d known, once she was here, she would have had no escape?

  Zayan gently cupped her cheek. “I am sorry. I know what the betrayal of a loved one feels like.” Below the dark slashes of his brows, his beautiful eyes revealed anguish, and her heart gave a small leap. He caressed her face and brushed his thumb to her lower lip, making it tingle.

  His mouth lowered toward hers and she arched up. Wanting his kiss. Needing it.

  She fell forward and her hand touched his chest above his heart—

  They were sleeping. He padded softly into the chamber in which the boy reposed. He could not assign this task to anyone else. He could not put himself in anyone else’s power. Wearing a slave’s robes, he had entered the house. He was believed to be far away, on his way home from battle. It would never be suspected that his was the hand that struck—

  The boy stirred. He was small and frail. It would be an easy task. A hand to the mouth to muffle a scream, a quick slash with the blade. As his hand clamped down over the face, the boy’s eyes opened, showing first confusion, then recognition, then—with the wisdom of the young—frantic fear and the knowledge of impending death.

  Blood sprayed. He had pulled a dark cloak on top of the servant robes. This he would discard when he was finished.

  There. It was done. All he had to do now was find the girl—

  “Miranda?” Arms surrounded her; hard muscle pressed against her back.

  Blinking, Miranda focused on the present, not the past. The horrific image had disappeared. She had fallen against Zayan’s broad chest and he had embraced her. She heard one slow, languorous beat of his heart. Then she dazedly remembered what she had seen and struggled to break free.

  She had seen what had happened to Lukos. Was she seeing what Zayan had done?

  He let her go and she glared at him, hurt and furious. Her heart must be thumping as loud as a drum. “You told me you were a Roman general. Is that the truth? In which case, you have blood on your hands.” Her blood was moving like mud through her veins. “Did you kill children?”

  Zayan had lit a torch in the cell with his magic lights, and his eyes were mirrors in the wavering light. Reflective eyes hid so much. “I have a great deal of blood on my hands. And though it was said that I fed from children, that I took their blood to keep me eternally young, that was not true. I would never hurt a child.”

  His eyes might be shielded, but his words were tired, and his voice held a heavy quality that sounded like regret. A vampire was without a soul, but Eugenia had told her that the “poor creatures” did experience emotion, and that the Royal Society was wrong in its belief that vampires could not feel anything. Eugenia believed they carried the pain of their mortal lives into their undead existence.

  The images she had seen haunted her. She wanted to know what they were. “Were you forced to become a vampire? Or did you willingly become a vampire?” Wouldn’t a general want to embrace immortality? To be able to fight with preternatural strength and never die? “Why did you give up your soul? To win battles?”

  “Any man only embraces death when he has nothing left to live for. Even on the battlefields, when the pain is beyond belief, a man will welcome death.”

  “Were you dying on the field and you became a vampire to escape?”

  “I saw my children dead in their beds and knew I had nothing to live for other than revenge.”

  His words, thrown at her without a trace of emotion, stole all the air from her lungs. The small boy she had seen—had that been Zayan’s son? “H-how did they die?”

  “They were murdered. Someone had entered my house and slit their throats.”

  Dear God, she had seen it. And she had heard the killer’s thoughts in her head. This had never happened to her before. She had seen through a murderer’s vicious, coldhearted eyes. The whips and instruments of torture around her dropped away. They did not matter anymore. “Who murdered your children?” She was not sure why she was determined to push to find the truth.

  His silvery eyes turned oddly black, like the shiny surface of a smooth plane of coal. He turned away from her and contemplated the other whips hanging upon the cell wall. Midnight black and gleaming in the torchlight, his hair rippled around his shoulders. Suddenly, he launched forward and slammed his fist at the wall. Chips of stone flew into the air. He had drilled a three-inch-deep hole with his fist, and Miranda froze at the sight of such rage.

  “That is somet
hing you do not need to know,” he said, but he did not turn. He ripped several of the whips from the wall and broke the thick handles, scattering them to the ground. “By the gods, it is like I can see them again—”

  She was scared. By touching him and seeing the murders, had she brought the memories back to him? She was afraid to approach him.

  “I’ve never known the truth of who did it,” he said. “I became a vampire, possessing unearthly strength and powers, but I could not prove who murdered my children. I believe one of my rival generals had them killed. My innocent children were slaughtered to destroy me. You asked if I became a vampire to escape. I did—to escape pain.” He turned. “What need had I for a soul?”

  “Slaughtered. I am so very…sorry.” She had never seen a man look in so much agony—only Lukos when she had witnessed his torture in a vision.

  She had not seen the face of the killer of Zayan’s children because she had seen through his eyes. What would it do to Zayan to tell him what she had seen? It would not help him. And she could offer him no clue to the killer.

  He pushed off the wall, and he faced her hollowly. “When immortality and strength were offered to me, I saw I could get the vengeance I craved. That’s why I chose to become a soulless demon, my love. I got my vengeance and thousands of frightened, weak mortals paid the price.”

  Before she could respond—before she could think whether she should be angry, or sorry, or outraged by a man who selfishly hurt others to ease his grief—the long echoes of a gong filtered through the dungeon.

  “Dinner,” he murmured. “You were denied the chance to eat at the inn. You must be ravenous now.”

  It was as though the sound had broken through his anguish. Pain no longer distorted his features. He was as handsome as ever.

  “Dinner? In the middle of the night?” Then she understood. Zayan had compelled the servants to serve a meal for her.

  What did food matter? If only she could have been there for his children. She could have touched them and—

  “You are thinking that if you had been there, you would have changed everything,” he said coldly. “You would have given me my children back. You would have stopped my heart from breaking. You would have stopped me from making a pact with the devil. You might have spared so many lives.”

  That had been her thought, and he had seen it. “I know it’s impossible, but I don’t deserve your anger for thinking it.” He strode to the door, then turned, waiting for her to follow. But he did not compel her to do it. As with Lukos, she went to him to ask questions. “Has it haunted you for all these years? For centuries?”

  She saw a quick flash of anger. He did not want to talk about it. Which surprised her then, when he said softly, “I can still see the wounds. I can see the pools of blood behind their heads. But I can’t remember what their faces looked like. I’ve forgotten. I’ve spent almost two thousand years trying to remember, but with each moment, the memory of them becomes harder to grasp. I will forever see them dead. I’ll never again see them as they were alive.”

  His words speared her. Pain etched lines around his mouth and slashes of shadow across his forehead. She thought of the shock and the futile anger that had almost drowned her when her older brother had died. Even after she had saved him, terrible fear and grief had consumed her, as though he had died and not lived. She had wanted to do something dangerous and mad to expend all that fury and pain that had no outlet.

  If Simon had died, and if someone had appeared and offered to make her a vampire, what might she have done?

  You understand…

  The words echoed in her thoughts. Miranda realized Zayan now stood in front of her. Her hair still rippled with the slight breeze of his impossibly fast movement.

  He cupped her cheek again, his bare skin smooth as velvet. “No magic this time,” he murmured. Then he bent to her mouth.

  Aching for his broken heart, his sorrow and pain, she let his mouth cover hers, a mouth that was impossibly warm for a man who should be dead. Zayan was tortured. He had been driven to madness by an unthinkable crime. She saw that Aunt Eugenia had been correct. Zayan had the capacity to feel regret and know sorrow.

  She let her lips part, shamelessly encouraging him. Her upper lip bumped his fangs and she felt the prick to her toes. Silky and hot, his tongue touched her lips, sending another jolt of sensation that streaked down through her and seemed to burst into fireworks between her thighs.

  His hand tightened on her back, pulling her up to his mouth as his lips ravaged hers and his tongue filled her mouth with heat. Each teasing plunge of his tongue made her pulse between her legs. He kept kissing her and didn’t seem to ever want to leave her mouth.

  A sharp clang jolted Miranda back from the kiss. Lukos had thrown the door to the cell wide open. He stared pointedly at her corset and shift—revealed because the cloak had fallen open. Then he snarled, baring his fangs.

  Miranda strode down the corridor toward her bedchamber—and clothes—clutching the fur-lined cloak around her. She felt a ripple of air; then Lukos materialized in front of her and in front of her bedchamber door. His long strides and preternatural strength had easily allowed him to catch, then pass her. He braced his arm on the wall. Bolts of vivid light seemed to flash in his silvery violet eyes.

  “You kissed him,” Lukos growled. “You went with him to the dungeons and let him kiss you. You enjoyed it. I heard the rapid, excited beat of your heart—”

  Miranda threw up her hands. Lukos’s lower lip had jutted out into a boyish pout. She could not understand. He had willingly let Zayan kiss her nipples in the carriage. And now, rage crackled off him like lightning sparked by colliding clouds.

  He would not step aside and let her pass. He was jealous. This was all about possessiveness. “You shared me in the carriage,” she said in a fierce whisper. “Why are you behaving now like a petulant boy?”

  “I was in control in the carriage—I was part of the game, allowing you to explore. In the dungeon, you were opening your heart to another man. That’s a different thing.”

  “I sympathized with the tragedy that Zayan had experienced. Just as I felt horrified by what had happened to you—”

  “You pity me?” Lukos roared in disbelief. He reached for her cloak, but she held up her hand. To her amazement, a red glow shot from her palm and hit Lukos squarely in his chest. It shoved him back and he stumbled sideways.

  Heart pounding, Miranda pushed open her door and rushed into her room. She paused before closing the door. “What would you prefer? That I am afraid of you? That’s not what either of you want, is it? For some reason, you both want to seduce me. Why? For my magical power? We’ve already proven I cannot return your souls. What is it you want from me?”

  He said nothing. So she pulled off the cloak and flung it out into the hallway, then shut the door hard. At which point the shock of the dungeons, the horrifying images, the battle with a vampire in a tantrum all did their work, and shaking, she sank to the bed.

  She felt close to them both—to two vampires. Again, that mad belief returned. That this was where she belonged. With them.

  Lukos had the last word—in her thoughts. Not my soul, angel, he whispered in his beckoning, beautiful voice. Someone else’s.

  Why had he told her about his children?

  Zayan tucked Miranda’s hand in the crook of his arm and led her toward the long, laden table in the center of the dining hall. He had felt her turmoil of emotions in the dungeon’s cell. She’d hated him for what he had shown her about Blackthorne. She had felt lost and alone. And then she’d pitied him, and now that emotion was strongest in her heart.

  A growl from her stomach chased away some of his anger. He had not wanted to talk of his children, but sympathy had begun to open her heart to him. It wasn’t seduction that would make her fall for him, he realized, but his vulnerability. She wasn’t going to love him for his strength, but very possibly for his weaknesses.

  He was going to have to open his own hea
rt, slice open his own old wounds. And he was going to use her compassion against her because he had no choice.

  It was the only way to bring his children back.

  Lukos already sat at the table, arrogantly sprawled in a high-backed chair. Flames flickered on candles on the table and reflected in crystal glasses. Steam wafted from the food; he remembered the aroma as being good, but food held no interest for him.

  Miranda’s scent teased him as he drew out her chair and watched her stiffly seat herself. She smelled of sweat, of blood, but also a trace of feminine vanilla and roses. She smelled of life. And she carried a richer natural perfume—the intoxicating aroma of magic.

  He watched her lift her wineglass to her soft lips, and he remembered…

  Once he had returned home in haste from the battlefield. He had burst into his house. He had found his children sleeping, his wife bathing. She had rejected him that night—because of the gore still on him, the stench of his body. Even after he’d bathed, she had been like wood in his bed, her body stiff and her eyes closed. He knew she took lovers while he fought. He knew she did not love him, but what he had not known was how far she would go to betray him—

  He had left her sleeping and had gone to his children. He had kissed them. He could remember the curve of their cheeks, the velvet softness of their skin, darkened to honey-bronze by the Mediterranean sun. The smell of that sunshine had clung to their hair.

  But he could not remember anything more.

  The clink of dishes brought Zayan back to the present. His silvery gray gaze followed each motion of Miranda’s graceful hands as she ate. Spoonful after spoonful of meat and sauce. Watching her try to eat daintily with ravenous hunger eased the iciness around his heart. Soft cooing sounds escaped her as she ate. She enjoyed her food with simple passion.

  Lukos was drinking—demons could—and watching Miranda, flames reflected in his eyes.