Not about to let any man treat Kam cruelly, Johnny flung himself over the balustrade and landed before the twosome, coming up to a defensive stance with hands in fists.
“She is mine,” the boyfriend said. “Be gone with you.”
Damn, the guy had one of the deepest, most vile sounding voices Johnny had ever heard. It pricked up the hairs on the back of his neck. Was he a demon? He couldn’t see the guy’s face in the darkness, but surely he would notice if his eyes glowed red.
“Yeah, I’m not going anywhere,” Johnny said. “She’s not keen on you, buddy. You’re the one who needs to take off.”
Kambriel shivered. With a gesture from the man—looked like Death curling out a beckoning talon—she stepped closer to his side. He put an arm around her, and yet she met Johnny’s gaze. Silently, she pleaded with him.
Hell yeah, he’d help her.
“What’s your name?” Johnny asked.
The man laughed a hideous rumble that rattled in Johnny’s bones.
“You didn’t tell him?” the man asked Kam. “Kambriel has been remiss. Tell the idiot vampire whom he attempts to cuckold.”
Abandoning the cool, confident stage goddess, Kam stepped forward, meek now. The air around Johnny cooled as, behind Kam, the man shifted from a tall, dark shadow into something much bigger, broader, and...horned.
Johnny’s eyes widened. His mouth dropped open. The shadow of those wicked horns seemed to pierce his shadow on the ground behind him. And though he’d never come face to face with the creature before him, he instinctually knew who and what he was.
“He’s…” Johnny started. Hell. Really? The prince of darkness?
Kam nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were fucking the devil?” Johnny blurted.
Kam’s worried moue slipped into a frown. She gasped. “How dare you?” She slapped Johnny’s cheek. Hard. “I hate you!”
Turning, she was enveloped in Himself’s arms. With a sepulchral chuckle, her dark master shimmered them away into the night.
Chapter Eight
Sulfur lingered in the air long after Kam and her boyfriend had disappeared from the vast parvis before Nôtre Dame.
“Himself,” Johnny muttered.
When growing up, he had heard tales of the devil Himself. His father had always warned him never to say the prince of Darkness’s name three times in a row unless he wished to invite hell to his doorstep. Supposedly the devil appeared to others in the form of their greatest temptation.
He’d looked like a dude to Johnny. And that was not his temptation.
“Must be able to adjust his appearance. He wanted me to see what Kam must see.” Which in this instance, had been a tall, attractive man; someone Johnny would see on stage in a band. Classic rocker looks.
Like him.
Kam apparently had a type.
But seriously? His rival was the dark prince Himself?
“And she is sleeping with him?”
Johnny whistled and shook his head. “Not what I want to get involved with.”
Walking away from the cathedral, he wandered across the bridge to the right bank. Much as the idea of dating a woman who was involved with the devil appealed on no conceivable level whatsoever, he could not get Kambriel from his mind. Her kisses were too sweet. Her controlled innocence so remarkably refreshing. And their duet—it had started something, inflamed something between them. They were meant to be together.
* * *
Kam turned away from the great throne where Himself sat, his taloned fingers clacking the throne arm. His horns glinted menacingly. No red glowed from his eyes because his lids were down. He was displeased with her.
She was displeased with Johnny Santiago.
You should have told me you were fucking the devil.
A blatant assumption. Did having a boyfriend imply they were having sex? It shouldn’t, but she supposed anyone would assume as much.
But not Johnny. He was supposed to be different. On her side. Willing to fight for her.
She’d been wrong about him.
“I shouldn’t have to retrieve you from your liaisons like a naughty child caught with her hand in the cookie jar,” Himself growled.
“I don’t like cookies.”
Himself hissed, clenching a fist with a shing of talons.
Kam, who squatted on the table before him, turned on her heels so her back was completely to him. He was not her father. No man could replace the great man who had raised her...
She sniffed back a tear. She wanted to go home to her family. If only she could make this nightmare stop, erase it from memory.
Lifting her head, she asked, “I’m allowed to do as I please, am I not?”
“You may drink from whomever you wish, my dark one. But I am no fool. Johnny Santiago is more to you than a mere sip.”
A fist pounded the table, upsetting the goblet near Kam’s feet. Blood spilled over her shoe and foot. Normally she would have dragged a finger through the rich treat and suck it away. Now, she stood and marched down the empty table, away from him, arms crossed high on her chest. She left a trail of blood in her wake.
“Do not walk away from me!”
Her body was tugged backward. Kam clawed at the air, landing on her palms as she was forcibly dragged through the blood. As she neared the end of the table her body flipped over and she landed, crouched, on his legs, her palms catching against his iron-hard black-muscled chest.
But a breath away from his face, she stared into his hard red eyes, summoning as much defiance as she could—stage persona to the rescue. And when she thought she could spit in his eyes and march away her body softened against her will and she settled into a ball in his arms. A sigh sifted from her being.
She didn’t want this surrender!
He controlled her with a persuasion far stronger than any vampire could wield.
“Johnny!” she screamed, but her voice was halted.
A blade cut across her neck, searing red pain as it separated skin, muscle and sliced bone. Kam clutched for the gaping wound—and felt only smooth skin.
* * *
“Hell of a rival,” Johnny muttered as he walked along the Seine toward the barge one of his tribe mates had lived in for years.
Did he want to compete against the dark prince?
For as right as Kam felt to him, she would always be wrong, tainted by the darkest, most menacing evil in existence.
Johnny shoved his hands in his pockets. The early morning walk was quiet, unhampered by tourists, because rain misted the cobblestones. Sunrise in an hour or two, he guessed.
The connection he had with Kam was undeniable. And if she did dump Himself for him, then he should be pleased. Yes?
And why should he give a care for what or who she had slept with before she’d met him? Everyone had a past, baggage.
That chick had a hell of a cartload of baggage.
But fact remained, he’d told her he wanted to win her heart, and he’d meant that. So that entailed a fight for her. How did a guy fight the devil himself?
“Johnny!”
He hadn’t noticed the man leaning against the stone river wall across from the moored barge. Dante tended to meld with the shadows due to his long black hair and a love for black velvet clothing. Add a frill of lace at the wrists and neck? Dante d’Arcangelo had been transformed to vampire during the bohemian phase at the end of the nineteenth century and had never shed the romantic image that had accompanied that fortuitous time in his life.
The romantic artist look certainly attracted the women. Dante was the lover in the Incroyables, and he took the title seriously. Usually he juggled two or three women, and that didn’t imply one at a time, either. The man’s bed was a revolving showcase of flesh and scintillatingly wicked indulgences.
“What’s up?” Dante gestured Johnny join him at the wall. “You look troubled.”
Dante was always willing to listen. Another attribute, for who didn’t like to talk about himself?
>
Johnny squatted, pressing his back against the wall, and picked up a smooth stone from the cobbled walk. Turning it over and over, he then tossed it high and over the barge, waiting to hear the splash. “You know that chick I’ve been seeing?”
“Christian mentioned you’d hooked up with a singer. The Dark’s Mistress. Kitschy title.”
“Yeah, well, turns out she really is the Dark’s mistress.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Think of the darkest most vile creature who walks this realm—and other realms—and then multiply that image a thousandfold. That’s her boyfriend.”
“Must be a demon.” Dante considered it. “It can’t be. How do you know?”
“Because I met him earlier tonight. Kambriel is the freakin’ devil’s bitch, Dante.”
Johnny caught his head between his hands and squeezed against his skull. It sounded horrible to say it, and he wanted to run from it and forget he’d never met Kambriel.
And then all he wanted to do was steal her away from Himself and make her safe. Free.
Dante whistled. “Not cool. You have terrible luck with women, my friend.”
“Not always.”
“So the soul sucker you dated last winter was a prize?”
“I didn’t know she was a succubus until it was too late.”
And she’d sucked him dry of vitality. Those had been some hellacious weeks. Good thing Viviane had come to visit and had refused to leave until her grandson was up and out of bed and drinking blood like a good little vampire.
And thinking about Viviane; he needed to give Rhys a call and make sure G-ma was all right. What was up with his family lately? Grandma sneaking out at the beckon of the devil, and his father seeking illicit drugs he knew damn well could destroy him. Had Himself lured his G-ma to the club? For what reason other than if he knew Kam had been seeing him? And Vail had said something about dancing with the devil.
Really?
Johnny punched a fist into his palm.
“So I assume you’re done with this one,” Dante said, “and now you’re in the aftershocks and moping stage of the affair?”
“I don’t know, Dante. Am I done with her?”
“She’s screwing the devil. I’d say you’re done.”
“But she’s scared. She wants to get away from him and she needs my help to do that. And yet I’m going about it bass ackwards. I said the wrong thing to her.”
“Such as?”
“I said she should have told me she was screwing the devil. Although I used a much harsher word. I didn’t even see the slap coming. Then she told me she hated me and walked away in his arms.”
“Ah.”
“That ‘ah’ sounded too hopeful for this conversation.”
“It did, didn’t it?” Dante stepped around before Johnny and bowed grandly, sweeping out a lace-encircled wrist. “She’s thrown down the gauntlet, man.”
“What? You old vamps and your ancient words and ways screw with my brain, you know?”
“You know what a gauntlet is.”
“I do, but what the hell does it have to do with getting slapped by a chick?”
“If she has said she wants to be free, and you feel that she cares for you as much as you do her, then it sounds as if she has issued a challenge to you. Will you pick it up? Will you rescue her from the evil demon that holds her beguiled?”
“Beguiled,” Johnny whispered. “That’s it exactly. She’s under some kind of spell. She’s not with him because she wants to be.”
“I would assume nothing but. Himself is a powerful being. But do you believe anyone would knowingly hook up with such an asshole?”
“I would hope not. So you think she wants me to come after her? To prove myself to her? She did say something about me having to win her from him.”
Dante nodded. “Sounds horribly romantic. The knight rescuing the damsel.”
“Dude, come into the twenty-first century, will you?”
“My romantic mien has been working for me for almost two centuries.”
“Right. Nix that. But me? How does a guy fight the devil?”
“You really wish to?”
Johnny closed his eyes and the first image he saw was Kam, laughing as she turned to him from her position atop Nôtre Dame, the moon in the background, shining like pearls upon her skin. He would die for another kiss from her. It was as simple as that.
“Yes,” he said.
“Then you need to figure out what kind of armor will repel the dark lord, including weapons. Perhaps you’ll need witchcraft. I know a witch or two. And it’s time you placed your heart on your sleeve and showed the damsel you are worthy.”
“That’s all I want, to be worthy of her admiration.”
“Spoken like a true romantic. I’ll have you in velvets and lace in no time, my friend.”
“Velvet, I can do. But the lace? I prefer studs and shit-kickers.”
Dante sighed, and Johnny laughed because he’d found a means to release the anxiety and now he knew what he had to do. It wouldn’t be easy, but every step would be worth the trial that would lead him closer to Kam’s heart.
Chapter Nine
Kam pushed away the fang junkie who had been delivered to the courtyard below her penthouse. He dropped to the grass, a smile on his face, blood purling around his neck. In minutes he would be gone from where he lay. They had a way of disappearing after she ceased considering them. Himself’s work.
Savoring the lingering warmth of blood on her tongue, she stood and clutched the arabesqued ironwork gate linking her building’s courtyard to another. Closing her eyes, tears spilled freely.
She’d needed blood, yet the taste of it did not satisfy. She wanted more. She wanted different. She wanted sex and blood and rock n’ roll spilling down her throat.
She wanted safety.
“I shouldn’t have said I hated him. He’ll never return now.”
But his words had cut into her heart. She’d reacted by slapping him. Had she spoiled any chance of escape from Himself?
She was trapped in a loveless relationship with a creature that controlled her soul. He would never command her completely. She would be sure of that. She yet maintained some strength, some inner power over her body. And when she knew he took things from her memory, and gave her compulsions and desires for things she could never need, she clung to the one piece of herself that was hers to give to another.
Yet, if she gave herself—in body and blood—to another man, would that then make her like all the others, another woman lacking purity, no longer a golden prize to dangle before the devil Himself?
Kam sniffed away tears. Something in her chest opened, and a lightness within blossomed. Why hadn’t she considered this before? If she seduced Johnny and made love with him, then she would cease to be that golden prize. There would be nothing about her the dark prince could then desire.
It was so simple.
Yet to perform such a seduction under the watchful eye of Himself was another consideration. For she knew, even when she was alone, he watched. It had something to do with the tattoos that she knew were never in the same place in the mornings when she glanced to her shoulder.
Himself had appeared at Nôtre Dame to show Johnny he was out of his league. She belonged to Himself. Let no man dally with the epitome of evil and expect to live.
Perhaps she should let Johnny go? Release him from the expectations she’d alluded to regarding him helping her find freedom? It would be the kindest thing to do.
Desperation pounded in her shivering heart. Or was that the fluttering from the multitude souls she stole with each bite?
Kam pressed a palm over her chest. “I’m sorry. I need to find freedom, if only to free the souls. I’ve been selfish. And I must be even more selfish and lure Johnny into helping me.”
It would kill him, surely. But in order to release the souls and win her freedom it must be done.
* * *
Kambriel strolled through her cl
oset, stroking the fine fabrics and shaking her head as one after the other didn’t feel right. The black chiffon was meh, and satin felt too dire and moody. A few colors existed within: red, pink, purple. She loved purple, but the slinky purple lace negligee felt too needy.
Too serious, too stuffy, too goth, too bondage, too…all not right for the mood she wanted to set with Johnny tonight. Everything must be perfect. She didn’t want to give him a single reason to refuse what she wanted to offer him.
Although she suspected he’d accept what she had to offer no matter what she wore. Any man would. Because wasn’t that what they all wanted was to get into a girl’s panties? To claim mastery over her? To take the one thing she could only give away once?
“I am desperate,” she whispered, and shuddered.
Desperation was not the most promising means for offering a man one’s virginity. Hell, it sounded absolutely, well, desperate. And stupid. But she didn’t know what else to do. Her pesky virginity had to be done away with because it was the one thing that secured her appeal to Himself.
Her fingers slid over a violet silk dress she’d never worn. It was simple, dark, yet had a frill of soft ruffles at the hem, which would land mid-thigh. She pulled it on and it swept over her body and hugged her in all the right places. The neckline dipped into a low square, framing her breasts. She wanted to admire how it looked on her but the one thing vampires could never do was see their reflection. Even Himself had not been able to grant her that request.
The dress fit perfectly, so she would go with it. Some Louboutins with the fun silver spikes all over added a dangerous touch. Wandering into the bathroom, she found the perfume oil she loved and touched it behind her ears and at her elbows. It was a dark cherry chocolate blend called Bloody Mary. Again, appropriate.
“Now, I’ll wait and see if he comes to me.”
Closing her eyes, Kam thought of Johnny Angel holding her in his arms and kissing her. If wishes could become reality then tonight she needed such hopeful magic.
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