Warlord Wants Forever

by Kresley Cole

  “I must make it deeper, Mother. There’s not enough room.”

  She whispered, “There’s room enough. I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

  His eyes widened. She meant to fight them? “Trace from here alone,” he said, though he knew she was probably too weak even for that.

  “Never! Now, what are your vows to me?”

  “Mother, I—”

  She snapped her fangs, her irises gone black. “Your vows!”

  “Take the life of Stefanovich. Seize his throne.”

  “Whom will you trust?”

  “None but your father and my queen.”

  More tears dropped. “No, your queen alone, Lothaire. Serghei and the Daci forsook us this day.”

  “Why?”

  “I led these mortals too close.” She gave a sob. “He chose the kingdom’s precious secrecy—over our lives. I am to pay for my brashness, for my lack of cunning. They make an example of me.”

  Panic flared within Lothaire. “How will I find you? What do I do?”

  “Once the humans are gone, my family will come for you. If not, you’ll do whatever it takes to survive. Remember all I’ve taught you.” She shoved her sleeve up her arm. “Drink, Lothaire. It will make you strong enough to endure the coming days.”

  He shook his head in confusion. “You cannot lose blood.”

  “Obey me!” She bit into her wrist. “Lean your head back and part your lips.”

  Unwillingly, he did, and she raised her arm over his upturned face, above his mouth. Her blood was rich, quickly warding off the chill.

  She made him drink till the stream had ebbed to a trickle, till ice had formed on the wound. “Now listen. I will lead them away from you, distract them. They will take me—”

  “Nooo!” he howled.

  “Lothaire, listen! When they capture me, the need to protect me will rise up within you. You must ignore it and remain here. Ignore your instinct and rely on cold reason. As I failed to do with Stefanovich. As I failed to do a thousand times. Vow this!”

  “You want me to hide? To not defend you against those creatures?” Embarrassing tears welled.

  “Yes, this is precisely what I want. Son, your mind is the brightest I’ve ever encountered. Use it. Do not repeat my mistakes!” She gripped his chin. “You’ve one last vow to give me. A vow to the Lore that you will not leave this spot until the mortals are gone.”

  To the Lore? ’Twas an unbreakable vow! He wanted to rail, to deny her this. How could he not defend her?

  She raised her chin. “Lothaire, I … beg you for this.”

  A princess of the Daci begging one like me? His lips parted in shock. Words tumbled from them. “I vow it to the Lore.”

  “Very good.” She pressed a cool kiss to his brow. “I want you to never, never be brought this low again.” Over his frantic protests, she began to bury him in the snow. “Become the king you were born to be.”

  “Mother, please! H-how can you do this?”

  “Because you are my son. My heart. I will do whatever it takes to protect you.” They met gazes. “Lothaire, anything that was worthy in me began with you.”

  He refused to believe this would be the last time he saw her, refused to tell his mother how much he loved her—

  She whispered, “I know,” then cocooned him in snow.

  Warmed by her blood, he lay huddled, quaking with fear for her. His eyes darted, seeing nothing.

  Had she swept to her feet, sprinting back in the mortals’ direction? In time, he heard her struggles from a distance, could feel the vibrations of a number of footfalls. What must be dozens of humans surrounded her. He clenched his fists, battling his frenzied yearning to save her.

  Yet Lothaire was powerless—bound by his vow and undermined by his weakness.

  His stifled yells of frustration turned to scalding tears when he heard the clanking of chains, her muffled screams.

  The guttural sounds of men.

  He’d been raised in Helvita under the wicked reign of Stefanovich; Lothaire knew what those mortals were doing to her.

  As he fought not to vomit the precious blood she’d gifted him, he resolved that he would become one of the Fallen, drinking other creatures for strength.

  He might grow mad with bloodlust; never would he be helpless again…

  What must have been hours later, her cries fell silent. Again, his eyes darted. He thought he caught a thread of smoke, then the scent of burning flesh.

  Dawn. Her screams renewed.

  As she burned, she yelled in Dacian, “Never forget, my prince! Avenge me!” Other words followed, but he couldn’t make them out. Then unintelligible sounds … agonized shrieks.

  To the sound of her screams, he sobbed, repeating his vows over and over, adding a new one.

  “Burn the k-king … of the Daci alive…”

  “My sanity will fail me long before my will does. Luckily, the only thing more interesting than a madman is a relentless one.”

  —LOTHAIRE KONSTANTIN DACIANO, THE ENEMY OF OLD

  “Me, a steel magnolia? Steel, my ass! [Laughing, then abruptly serious.] Try titanium.”

  —ELIZABETH “ELLIE” PEIRCE, EXPERT IN BOYS, REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY, AND LAW-ENFORCEMENT EVASION

  “The difference between you and me is that my actions have no consequences for me. That is what makes me a god.”

  —SAROYA THE SOUL REAPER, DEITY OF BLOOD,

  SACRED PROTECTRESS OF VAMPIRES, GODDESS OF DIVINE DEATH

  1

  Slateville, Virginia

  FIVE YEARS AGO

  So you thought to exorcise me?” Saroya the Soul Reaper asked the wounded man she stalked by firelight. “I don’t know what is worse. The fact that you thought I was a demon …”

  She twirled the blood-drenched cleaver in her hand, loving how the man’s widened eyes followed each rotation. “… or that you believed you could separate me from my human host.”

  Nothing short of death could remove Saroya. Especially not a mortal deacon, one among a group of five who’d come all the way out to this vile trailer in Appalachia to perform an exorcism.

  As he scrambled a retreat from her steady march forward, he stumbled over one of the broken lamps on the floor. He tripped onto his back, briefly releasing his hold on the spurting stump that used to be his right arm.

  She sighed with delight. Centuries ago, when she’d been a death goddess, she would have swooped down and sunk her fangs into the human’s jugular, sucking until he was naught but a husk and devouring his soul; now she was cursed to possess one powerless mortal after another, experiencing her own death again and again.

  Her latest possession? Elizabeth Peirce, a nineteen-year-old girl, as lovely as she was poor.

  When the deacon met the dismembered corpse of one of his brethren, he gave a panicked cry, glancing away from her. In a flash, Saroya leapt upon him, swinging the cleaver, plunging the metal into his thick neck.

  Blood sprayed as she yanked the blade free for another hit. Then another. Then a last.

  She swiped the back of her arm over her spattered face as her demeanor turned contemplative. Mortals believed themselves so special and elevated, but decapitating one sounded exactly like a fishmonger beheading a fat catch.

  Finished with the last of the five deacons, Saroya turned to the only survivor left in the trailer: Ruth, Elizabeth’s mother. She huddled in a corner, mumbling prayers as she brandished a fire poker.

  “I have vanquished your daughter’s spirit, woman. She will never return,” Saroya lied, knowing that Elizabeth would soon find a way to rise from unconsciousness to the fore, regaining control of her body.

  Of all the mortals Saroya had possessed, Elizabeth was the prettiest, the youngest—and the strongest. Saroya had difficulty rising to take control unless the girl was asleep or weakened in some way.

  A first. Saroya gave a sigh. Elizabeth should consider it an honor to be the form to Saroya’s essence, the flesh and blood temple housing her godly vampiric spirit.<
br />
  Saroya peered down at her stolen body. Instead, she’d had to fight Elizabeth for possession, was still fighting her.

  No matter. After centuries of being shuffled into stooped, elderly men or horse-faced women, she’d found her ideal fit in Elizabeth. In the end, Saroya would defeat her. She had wisdom from times past and present, hallowed gifts—and an ally.

  Lothaire the Enemy of Old.

  He was a notoriously evil vampire, millennia in age, and the son of a king. A year ago, his oracle had directed him to her. Though Saroya and Lothaire had spent only one night together in the nearby woods, he’d pledged himself to save her from her wretched existence.

  He might not have the ability to return Saroya to her goddess state. But somehow he would extinguish Elizabeth’s soul from her body, then transform Saroya into an immortal vampire—circumventing the curse.

  Saroya knew Lothaire would be hunting ceaselessly for answers.

  Because I’m his Bride.

  She gazed past Elizabeth’s mother out a small window, finding the wintry landscape empty. Had she hoped that a massacre like this might have brought Lothaire to her?

  How much longer am I to wait for him in this gods forsaken wasteland? With no word?

  He’d talked of the legion of adversaries out to destroy him, of ancient vendettas: “If a vampire can be measured by the caliber of his foes, goddess, then consider me fearsome. If by the number? Then I’ve no equal.”

  Perhaps his enemies had prevailed?

  No longer would she remain here. The Peirce family had begun chaining Elizabeth to the bed at night, preventing Saroya from killing, the only thing she lived for.

  Reminded of her treatment, she turned to the mother. “Yes, your daughter is mine forever. And after I’ve slain you, I’ll behead your young son, then sweep through your family like a disease.” She raised the cleaver above her, took a step forward—

  Suddenly, black spots dotted her vision. Dizziness?

  No, no! Elizabeth was rising to consciousness with all the finesse of a freight train. Every single time, she surfaced like a drowning woman held underwater, overwhelming Saroya.

  The little bitch might reclaim control of her body, but, as usual, she’d wake to a fresh nightmare. “Enjoy, Elizabeth…”

  Her legs buckled, her back meeting the carpet. Blackness.

  Heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat—

  Ellie Peirce woke to a mad drumming in her ears. She lay on the floor of her family’s trailer, eyes squeezed shut, her body coated with something warm and sticky.

  No words were spoken around her. The only sounds were the living room’s crackling fire, her shallow breaths, and the howling dogs outside. She had no memory of how she’d come to be like this, no idea of how long she’d blacked out.

  “Mama, did it work?” she whispered as she peeked open her eyes. Maybe the deacons had been successful?

  Please, God, let the exorcism have worked … my last hope.

  Her eyes adjusting to the dim, firelit room, she raised her head to peer down at her body. Her worn jeans, T-shirt, and secondhand boots were sopping wet.

  With blood.

  Oh, God. Her fingers were curled around the hilt of a dripping cleaver. I told them not to unchain me until my uncle and cousins got here!

  But Reverend Slocumb and his fellow members of their church’s “emergency ministry” had smugly thought they could handle her—

  Movement drew her gaze up. A fire poker?

  Clenched in her mother’s hands.

  “Mama? Wait!” Ellie flung herself to her side just as the poker came slamming down on the floor where her head had been. Blood splashed from the carpet like a stepped-in puddle.

  “You foul thing, begone!” Mama shrieked, raising the iron again. “You got my girl, but you won’t have my boy!”

  “Just wait!” Ellie scrambled to her feet, dropping the cleaver. “It’s me!” She raised her hands, palms outward.

  Mama didn’t lower the poker. Her long auburn hair was loose, tangled all around her unlined face. She used one shoulder to shove tendrils from her eyes. “That’s what you said afore you started snarlin’ that demon language and slashin’ about!” Her mascara ran down her cheeks, her peach lipstick smeared across her chin. “Afore you killed all them deacons!”

  “Killed?” Ellie whirled around, dumbfounded by the grisly sight.

  Five hacked-up bodies lay strewn across the living room. Because of me. The men had been lured all the way out here by her mother’s imploring letters and by evidence of Ellie’s possession: recordings of her speaking dead languages she had no way of knowing and photographs of messages in blood that she had no memory of writing.

  Apparently, Ellie had once written in Sumerian, Surrender to me.

  Now Slocumb’s head lay apart from his other remains. His eyes were glassy in death, his tongue lolling between parted lips. One arm was missing from his corpse. She dimly realized it must be the one under the dining room table. The one lying beside the hank of scalp and a pile of severed fingers.

  Ellie covered her mouth, fighting not to retch. The five had vowed to exorcise the demon. Instead, it’d butchered them all. “Th-this was done by … me?”

  “As if you don’t know, demon!” Mama wagged her poker at Ellie. “Play your games with somebody else.”

  Ellie scratched at her chest, her skin seeming to crawl from the being within. Hate it so much, hate it, hate it, HATE it. Though she never knew its thoughts, right now she could nearly feel it gloating.

  Sirens sounded in the distance, setting the dogs outside to baying even louder. “Oh, God, Mama, you didn’t call that good-for-nothing sheriff?” Ellie and her family were mountain folk through and through. Any Law was suspect.

  At that, her mother dropped the poker. “You really are Ellie. The demon told me you wasn’t coming back this time! Told me you’d never return to us.”

  No wonder Mama had attacked.

  “It’s me,” Ellie said over her shoulder as she hastened to the window, her boots squishing across the carpet. She pulled aside the cigarette-stained curtains to gaze out into the night.

  Down the snowy mountainside, the sheriff’s blue lights glared, his car snaking up the winding road. Another cruiser sped behind it.

  “I had to call them, Ellie! Had to stop the demon. And then the nine-one-one dispatcher heard the deacons just a-screamin’…”

  What should I do … what can I do? Nineteen was too young to go to jail! Ellie would rather die, had already considered suicide if the exorcism didn’t work.

  Because these five ministers weren’t the demon’s first victims.

  There’d been at least two other men since the creature had possessed Ellie’s body a year ago. Early on, she’d woken to find a middle-aged man in her bed, his skin cooling against hers, his slashed throat gaping like a smile.

  None among her extended Peirce family had known what to think. Had a rival clan planted the body? Why single out Ellie? Why had there been blood on her hands?

  Her close-lipped cousins had buried the man out behind the family’s barn, telling themselves he must’ve had it coming.

  The family hadn’t begun to suspect she was possessed until more recently, when the demon had posed a mutilated coal company rep among Ellie’s old stuffed animals, then “blasphemed” for her kinfolk in ways a girl like Ellie “could never imagine.”

  After that, her mother and Uncle Ephraim had started chaining her at night, like Ellie was one of the hounds outside. Though she hated the chains and could easily have picked the locks, she’d endured them.

  But it’d been too late for some.

  Hikers had found a gruesome altar in the woods, with human bones littering the site. Mama had whispered to Ephraim, “You reckon it was Ellie?”

  Not me! The damned thing inside her was winning, taking control more often, and more easily.

  Just a matter of time till I’m gone altogether.

  As blue lights crawled closer, glar
ing even in the bright moonlight, Ellie had a mad impulse to clean herself up, waylay the sheriff outside to badger him for a warrant, then maybe cop to a crank call.

  After all, she hadn’t done these killings. Or maybe she should run!

  But she knew the Law would put dogs on her trail; she’d never make it to the next holler, not in the winter.

  And that wouldn’t solve the problem of the demon within her—

  She heard a thud behind her and spun around. Her mother, usually so resilient, had fallen to her knees, her face crumpling. “It told me it’d do me in, then go after the rest of the family, go after baby Josh.”

  Joshua, Ellie’s adored brother. She pictured him toddling about in his footy pajamas, his chubby cheeks growing pink as he laughed. An aunt was babysitting him in a trailer just down the mountain.

  At the thought of harm coming to him, Ellie’s tears fell unchecked. “Wh-what should I do?”

  Mama’s own tears poured. “If the reverend—God rest his soul—and his ministerin’ couldn’t get that devil of yourn out of you … no one can, Ellie. Maybe you should let the sheriff take you.”

  “You want me to go to jail?”

  “We done everything we can.” Mama rose, warily stepping closer. “Maybe them prison folks or even them psychiatrists can keep it from killin’ again.”

  Prison? Or death? Ellie swallowed, knowing that once she decided how she’d handle this, nothing could sway her. If her mother was stubborn, Ellie was trebly so, as immovable as the mountains all around them.

  Sirens echoed as the cruisers prowled up the long drive, then skidded to a stop in front of the trailer.

  Ellie swiped at her tears. “I’ll do you one better than jail.” I could take the demon with me. If she ran out the front door with blood on her and a gun in hand …

  Mama shook her head sternly. “Elizabeth Ann Peirce, don’t you even think about it!”

  “If this thing”—Ellie slashed her nails across her chest—“thinks it’ll hurt my kin, then it don’t know me very good.” Though her own gun and ammo had been taken from her, her father’s Remington remained in his closet. The sheriff wouldn’t know it was empty.