Blood Deep

by Sharon Page

  But where had she gone?

  At his side, Lukos groaned and rolled out of the bed. Zayan saw the flash of surprise, then irritation on Lukos’s face as he realized he had slept beside Zayan. Miranda had been between them at first, when they had first fallen asleep.

  Panic flared in Lukos’s eyes. He cocked his head, listening in stillness as a wolf would do. “I can hear her, Zayan.” His voice was hoarse. “I can hear Miranda’s thoughts, and she is terrified. She speaks of the red power—”

  Ice-cold fear swamped Zayan. Sending out his thoughts, he tried to find Miranda, but he could not. His panic ramped higher. Miranda, where are you? Where in the blue blazes are you? Aloud, he rasped to Lukos, in desperation, “Where is she? Can you find her?”

  Another fear took root in his heart. What did it mean that Lukos could communicate with her and he could not? Was it just the red power blocking his mind, or was it more? Could it be proof that Miranda was closer to Lukos than he? That Lukos was the man she loved?

  Was it really possible for a woman to share? To love two men equally?

  By the gods, did it matter? All that mattered was to have Miranda safe, even if he lost her to Lukos…

  “Christ Jesus!” Lukos shouted as the air in front of them began to ripple. It moved faster, then spun in a maelstrom. A red vortex appeared before them, turning at fierce speed. The coverlets lifted off the bed, and flew into the eye of it. In a flash of light, the fluttering blankets vanished.

  “Bloody hell,” Lukos shouted. He clutched the bedpost. Zayan gripped the one on his side, willing his preternatural strength to hold him. The force was sucking at him, pulling him backward. His fingernails drove into the wood, scratching it.

  On a howl, Lukos was pulled from the post and drawn into the vortex. The bedpost he had been holding snapped free of the canopy and fell. Distracted for the moment, Zayan loosened his grip.

  The force yanked him free, pulled him through the air, and he hit the swirling red lights feetfirst. It was like having his body torn apart—

  “Marius Praetonius.”

  At the shout of his mortal name, Zayan turned slowly. The wind threw his hair around his face, and suddenly, in his mind, he was again standing on a rocky ridge in Gaul, two thousand years ago. His legions were massed behind him, a valley stretched out before him—a valley filled with the soldiers and armaments of the Gauls.

  He had that moment of pause before he commanded his army to attack with a sweep of his sword. That moment when he could choose life or death, simply by either surging forward or turning back. He could savor the power of the choice, even though he knew his choice had already been made.

  An unnatural stillness would settle on the thousands of men in that moment.

  That stillness settled around him now.

  The red vortex had brought him here. The force of it had sent him hurtling through the fog-drenched night and had thrown him into the standing stone circle. He had risen, disorientated and battered…

  Now he slowly met eyes of the man who had shouted his name.

  He had hungered for this for two thousand years. The chance to cut out his enemy’s heart and eat it before the man’s dying eyes. The heat of rage set Zayan’s blood on fire as he met the triumphant dark eyes of Mucius Gaius, the man who had stolen his wife’s heart and had killed his children. Thanks to Miranda, he knew the truth.

  What he was about to do was not murder—it was justice.

  Gaius stepped forward. A broadsword sat comfortably in his meaty hand. Blond hair fluttered around his face, and he wore armor that gleamed in the moonlight. “I’ll slice you in half where you stand, Praetonius.”

  A snarl twisted Zayan’s lips. He sent a bolt of magic to his hand. At once a sword appeared there, and he held his weapon up to the sky. It almost hummed in his hand.

  Blue-white moonlight slanted along the beautiful swirling pattern of the forger’s work. This weapon had been imbued by the magic of the hand of a mortal craftsman, a man who lived for his metal, his flame, and his art.

  Zayan had used it in every battle two thousand years ago. In all those conflicts, after all the bones it had cleaved, the blood it had spilled, it did not bear even so much as a nick or a crack. He had conjured it perfectly from memory, but now, it did not feel as it once had done. It no longer seemed an extension of his arm.

  It felt as though it was another man’s weapon that he had picked up, foreign, awkward, cold.

  Gaius leapt forward and slashed wildly. Zayan jumped backward. On a stream of blue light, he turned a somersault in the air and Gaius’s blade heaved a clean arc where he had stood.

  Gaius was intending to cleave his head from his neck.

  Zayan had landed on a standing stone that had toppled over. Lifting his hand, he tried to send magic, but he felt nothing but cold in his palm. His powers of sorcery had been drained after he had summoned the sword.

  Damnation, he had not fought with a sword for centuries, and he felt awkward and unpracticed. But he didn’t have time to think of that.

  “Come here and fight, you damned coward,” Gaius shouted, and charged at him again.

  Roaring, Gaius reached him and slashed. Leaping from his stone, Zayan clashed his sword with Gaius’s blade. His foe’s eyes had narrowed into vicious slits. Harsh breaths sent Gaius’s chest heaving beneath the metal of his armor.

  “You are the coward,” Zayan spat back. He swung his sword to throw Gaius’s weapon back. “You sliced the throats of my children…my innocent, defenseless children.”

  “Children you begot on Claudia against her will.” Gaius threw the words at him as he powered forward. Gaius had a demon’s strength and he was swift on his feet. Zayan found himself forced back by a volley of hard blows of Gaius’s sword against his.

  Gaius was more driven than he. He realized it then, as he blocked the swipes of the sword, but did not move in for the kill.

  Miranda. Her name was flowing through his thoughts. He was worried for her, and that was taking his focus from this man he should yearn to destroy.

  A swift jab almost sent Gaius’s sword through his stomach, but he somersaulted again to avoid it.

  “You condemned me to this,” his enemy shouted. “An endless life where I am always haunted by the screams of your children. Their wails ring in my head in my every conscious moment. I became immortal as some sort of jest on you. After two thousand years of anguish, I learn that now.”

  For a moment, Zayan was rocked. He saw why he had been given his old foe on all but a silver platter. The red power thought it could distract him this way. It had given him what he’d yearned for, believing he would abandon Miranda so her power could be drained.

  He had a choice, Zayan saw suddenly. He could walk away from this battle, go in search of Miranda, and sacrifice his need for vengeance. He could walk away from his past. Or he could fight, he could carve Gaius into tiny pieces, but lose Miranda—and lose his future.

  But without magic, he could not find Miranda, or shift shape and hunt for her.

  Zayan drove forward, surprising Gaius. What did he remember of the general from so long ago? Gaius was cocky, bold, sometimes stupid. And arrogant. He overestimated himself.

  Spinning, Zayan blocked a series of fierce blows. His blade clanged against the armor around Gaius’s hips. Gaius’s blade whistled toward him, but the man was half-twisted to give the blow, and off balance.

  Zayan jumped to the side; Gaius tried to redirect his force and staggered—

  There, he had it. Zayan drove his sword up into Gaius’s side, in a small space between the breast plate and the jointed armor at his hips. His enemy fell to his knees, clutching his side. Gaius sputtered out curses, but Zayan was not listening to him. There was a sound, like a roar, in his ears.

  It was the sound of anguish he had made when he had gone from his son’s chamber to his daughter’s—

  With his boot, he shoved Gaius to the ground. Too weak to move, Gaius whimpered at him. “Two thousand years. I ha
ve spent an eternity of hell waiting to fight you, Zayan. I hunted for you, but that damned red mist protected you. As though waiting—”

  For a moment, Zayan paused. Waiting…had the red power been waiting for Miranda all along?

  Then he lifted his sword.

  A brilliant light blinded him and froze his arms in position, raised above his head. One of the vampire queens appeared before him, dressed sumptuously, as usual, in a gown of rich purple silk, with furs swathed about her graceful shoulders. She was Elizabeth, the queen who had imprisoned him in what she called a paradise, and what he called hell. “Let him live, Zayan.”

  Sweat poured off him, as it had done when he was a mortal man. Salty rivulets dripped into his eyes. His body burned with exhaustion. It sang with blood lust.

  He felt like a mortal again.

  Miranda. This battle had likely cost him Miranda.

  “I’ve waited an eternity for this. I’ve lost everything to him…” Everything in his past—his children, his wife, his fame as a general. And the most important thing of his future—Miranda.

  Elizabeth moved toward him from the outskirts of the standing stones. Her feet did not touch the ground. The light surrounding her was a deep purple. “Miranda is not dead. The Pravus Semper, the red power as you call it, cannot kill her. Miranda is too powerful a being. She is not like Claudia. Her power is to give life and to cherish it. And no evil can vanquish that. But evil can play dirty tricks.”

  Zayan stared at her.

  “The Pravus has bonded Miranda’s life to that of your foe. He is not a vampire, but the Pravus has allowed him to live this long, waiting to make use of him.” Elizabeth waved her elegant hand to encompass Gaius, who lay gasping and weeping in the field.

  “You are saying if I kill him, I kill Miranda.”

  “The Pravus needs Miranda’s soul to steal her power, but it cannot kill her.”

  “So it tried to make me the instrument of her death.” Or was Elizabeth lying? Did he believe Elizabeth, who had wanted to destroy him before, but who had agreed to imprison him?

  Zayan, kill him. He heard the seductive voice of the red power, the Pravus, in his head. I will show you what he did to your children. You must make him pay. He did not make it swift for them. He wanted to see the terror in their eyes—

  An image speared him. Of his son, lifting his small hand to protect himself, horror and fear stark in his large brown eyes.

  Zayan lifted his sword higher, both hands clasped around the handle, and swung.

  “Yes!” He heard the word as he cleaved his sword through the night air. A quick cry of triumph given in the seductive, magical tone that had possessed him. The red power’s excitement surged through him.

  It was the thrill of a Judas. The anticipation of a siren who had lured a dupe of a man to kill.

  Zayan twisted his arms, and his momentum sent him stumbling. The tip of his sword drove into the rock by Gaius’s head. All his strength was in the blow. A clang rent the night air as metal struck rock and sparks flew up. His arms almost jerked out of their sockets as the force of the strike slammed back through him. The blade broke and the tip bounced up, then landed in the grass with a thud.

  In his hand, he held the stump of his beloved sword.

  He had no weapon any longer and no magical powers. But he felt the red power—the Pravus Semper—retreat on a blast of icy wind. With his broken sword clutched in his hand, Zayan turned to Elizabeth. “Can you take me to Miranda?”

  “No.” She hovered a foot off the ground, purple silk fluttering around her long legs. She pointed to his fallen, but breathing, enemy. “You are going to leave him alive? You will walk away from vengeance?”

  “Yes,” he roared, knowing that his goal for two thousand years—vengeance—meant nothing anymore. Not now. Not compared with Miranda’s life. He threw his sword into the air, where it exploded into a shower of stars. He was tired of hatred and anger, of anguish and pain. Miranda had shown him something more. “All I want,” he shouted into the night, “is Miranda.”

  He groaned then. “And I have no magic. Nothing—”

  “There are other types of magic, Zayan. There is, after all, the magic of love.” Elizabeth folded her arms across her chest. “I did not believe it could ever be so. That you—or Lukos—could be redeemed. That you could set aside vengeance and darkness.”

  “I am a vampire. How in blazes do I set aside darkness?”

  “Look to the Demon Twins, Yannick and Sebastien. Even though they are vampires, they have found light in their lives. Miranda came to you in your dreams, and you also traveled to her in hers. There is no reason you could not do that again.”

  A dream. An erotic dream.

  “A love shared between three. I suggest that to save her, you take Lukos with you.”

  To do it meant risking losing Miranda to Lukos completely. But to save her, he would do it.

  Lukos picked himself up from the cold, wet earth. The vortex of whirling red mist had thrown him here, on top of a pile of rocks. He’d hammered against them when he had landed. His body ached only slightly now as his demonic powers healed wounds and bruises that might have killed a mortal man.

  He closed his eyes, drew on his strength, then shifted shape. His body went fiery hot as it transformed, his skin tingling as fur quickly covered it, his muscles changing from strong human ones to the powerful ones of a wolf.

  He could scent Miranda now, and he charged toward her, drawn by his instincts…

  Bother that insufferable Ryder; he had chained her up in a mausoleum on the grounds of a large manor house. One on the other side of the village to the one Zayan and Lukos had claimed.

  Ryder’s eyes had glowed at her in the dark as he had dragged her along the aisle between rows of stone coffins. They had gleamed with a vivid red light. And he had been so strong, as strong as Zayan or Lukos.

  The red power. What had Althea called it? The Pravus Semper. Miranda had seen two puncture wounds on Ryder’s neck, and she could not understand how a fog could have done that. But what mattered was the result—Ryder was not human anymore.

  He had slammed her back against the wall, had pawed at her skirts. His breath, which stank of sulfur, had made her gag. Cruelly, he had squeezed her breasts.

  “Damnation,” he had groaned. “I want you. I’m rock hard. And I cannot do it. Not anymore.”

  He’d growled in fury, in agony, and in frustration. Then a sultry, hypnotizing voice had whispered over them both. “Come to me, James. You know where I wish you to be.”

  Then Ryder was gone. He had vanished from the dank mausoleum in a sparkle of red light, leaving her alone.

  Strangely, that was when fear crept in. It was worse to be trapped alone in the dark. She kept imagining a stone sarcophagus lid sliding open, a bony hand appearing at the rim of the coffin.

  What a foolish fancy. She had made love with men who were undead.

  A wolf’s howl floated on the air. Far above her, a faint red mist hovered, almost like a gaoler.

  If she could control her magic—as Lukos and Zayan could—she was certain she could break the shackles at her wrists. She squinted and glared at the silver circlets, but nothing happened.

  But then something did happen. Lights glittered around her. From the center of the beautiful twinkling lights stepped Lukos and Zayan, but she sensed it was not real.

  She felt at once aroused—wet, shivering with anticipation. This was like one of her dreams.

  They shimmered like they were flights of fancy, all silver and gold, naked against the blue-white moonlight.

  “I don’t understand. Is this real or not?” Miranda whispered it aloud.

  “I don’t know,” Lukos admitted. “I can smell the sweet, delicious perfume of your skin. And my erection feels real—and agonizing.”

  She was bound, and though Zayan stepped forward, his hair flowing behind him, and threw his magic at it, the cuffs did not open. “Damn,” he growled. But to Miranda’s astonishment, he
caught hold of her chin and kissed her deeply. Her lips sizzled at the slow, luxurious kiss. One of the vampire queens said we could come to you this way. In an erotic dream…

  Lukos kissed her shoulder on the other side. It was a soft caress, a tender one. He lifted her hair to coast his mouth over her neck, and she heard his ragged groan. Not of a need to feed, he murmured in her head. Out of the need to love you.

  She was magically shackled to a stone wall, her dress torn by Ryder. But she felt the love in Zayan’s and Lukos’s touches, and felt safe.

  She trusted them. And understood. This was not a fantasy where she was ravaged by two vampires…

  It was one in which she was loved by them both.

  We want to share you in the most intimate way…

  The red mist poured into the room; it slithered around the closed door, and in through any crack in the wall, any gap in the roof. She knew panic. This was an erotic dream. Zayan and Lukos were not really here to stand with her against the red fog—

  “We are,” Lukos insisted, his mouth brushing her earlobe. She whimpered at the teasing sensation of his hot lips caressing there. “Our spirits are. Our strength is. Our love is. You must believe it.”

  Lukos lifted her skirts. His hand cupped her derriere, but it felt light, thin…ghostly, as though it wasn’t there.

  “I believe it,” she said. “I believe in the power of our love.” She would, because saying it meant she had to…

  Lukos’s hands were caressing her rump and they became more firm, warmer. The roughness of his palm teased her sensitive skin. His hands felt real. They were real—the power of believing had brought the men to her through her dream.

  Fear mixed with passion inside, sending her heart pounding faster than it ever had before. “Take me now,” she moaned, before her courage and her faith fled completely.

  “These are erotic, but are making this too damned awkward.” Lukos reached up and grasped the chains that held her back to the wall. She wanted to be free, so she could be held between her men’s bodies and loved that way.