by Kari Gregg
Southern Louisiana
Present Day
In the dark hours that stretched after midnight, Garrick parked the SUV in a corner of a highway rest area. Lucien’s concentration refocused when he heard the keys rattle as his elder pocketed them. Garrick stared with wary, hungry eyes at Kate in the rearview mirror.
In the hours she’d slept, Lucien had pulled aside the blanket tented atop them, wrapping her nude body in it. Only her dark, tousled head peeked from its cocooning warmth, her skin flush with burgeoning health.
Her bruises had faded from vivid purple to yellow in the past hours. Garrick’s rich elder blood and the vampyr virus colonizing her body had seen to that. In a matter of days, if not hours, Kate would be healthier than she’d ever been as a human.
“We have half a day’s drive ahead, and you’ll need blood. I must hunt.” Garrick stared at her reflection in the rearview mirror. “See that she feeds before I return.”
“If she refuses?”
Garrick cursed under his breath. “My control is not as it should be. Do not tempt me, Luc.” He climbed from the SUV but stopped short of slamming the door. He blew out a hard breath and edged the door back open. “When she wakes, tell her…tell her…” He stared into the distance. “I can’t breathe without her. I don’t even want to.” His shoulders slumped. “If she dies, I die with her. Tell her that.”
Lucien watched him disappear in the shadows before gently shaking Kate. “Wake, ma petite. If you don’t feed and feed well before he returns…”
He didn’t want to consider the consequences.
Garrick was a cool one. The stronger his feelings, the more contained the elder vampyr became. Lucien had seen him unruffled in the heat of battle, composed though surrounded by half a dozen servant vampyr.
But Garrick’s legendary control was slipping.
“Wake up, Kate.” Lucien nudged her with his chin. “You must feed.”
Her heart quickened.
Her muscles tensed.
He knew she slumbered no more, but her eyes remained shuttered to him, her breath slow and even.
He sliced his chest open and pushed her mouth forward.
She didn’t protest, didn’t turn away.
But neither did she fasten her mouth to the wound.
“Kate?”
His quick mental probe sought resistance, horror—all the emotions he, too, had experienced at his first conscious feeding.
Instead, he found nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
His breath caught at the terrible black void.
There was no fear. No revulsion or disgust. Where he should’ve found a chaos of thoughts and emotions, he met emptiness.
His heart froze.
Unable to accept what she had become, her human mind had withdrawn deep inside her, where she waited to die.
Kate had made her choice.
His eyes slammed shut, her rejection a physical ache that wracked him to the bone.
He wanted to wail out his anguish, but he stroked her hair with trembling hands. “You’re horrified by what you now realize you have become. I don’t blame you,” he said on a low murmur. “Our greatest blessing and harshest curse has been human disbelief. Bram Stoker and your American movies.”
His lips curved to a tremulous smile. “Humans have not been kind in their incredulity. They made mythical beasts of us. They say we are killers accursed by God. We change into bats and mesmerize innocents. They claim we are wholly evil, that we aren’t even alive.
“But we are neither dead nor undead, as humans insist we must be. You feel your heart beating. Breath stirs your lungs. We are very different from humans, chère, but we are alive.” His finger traced the line of her jaw. “We aren’t the monsters that humans portray us, either. In three hundred years, I’ve never killed for blood. Murder is as reprehensible to us as it is to humans. A sin. Dark and forbidden.
“Do some turn? Humans and vampyr alike surrender their souls to hatred. We are capable of evil—great evil. Both of us.” He blew out a weary breath. “I’ve hunted those of our kind who choose darkness, and I assure you, bébé, the price we pay is harsher.
“Are we wicked? Damned as humans say?” He drew her limp body closer, taking comfort in her soft warmth. “The Bible says Jesus died so that all sinners may receive forgiveness. We need only accept his gift of salvation by faith, and that I have done, long centuries ago. The cross is my hope and the Lord my salvation. No symbol of his love will ever hurt me.
“We are no more evil than humans,” he said. “We feed from them, but we plant hypnotic suggestions to ease them and dim their memories. Our bite transfers antibodies that enhance their immune systems to speed recovery. Are humans as generous to the livestock they butcher, to the oceans they overfish?”
He snorted. “It is the life cycle of all things, the natural progression of the food chain. I don’t fault humans for their horror at submitting as prey to our predator, but never will I agree this makes vampyr beyond redemption and forever removed from God.”
He bent close, his voice urgent in the pink shell of her ear. “Return to me, Kate. I ask not for your acceptance of all that you are this moment, this night. I beg you, chérie, to only look inside your heart. If you see evil there, fade away. I’ll not pursue you. But if you find goodness, return to me. Trust me to care for you. Trust me to explain all—in time.”
Kate’s boneless, unresponsive body tore at his heart, his mind, his sanity. “Don’t leave me.” His voice roughened with unshed tears. “Please. Don’t leave.”
With an unearthly shriek of denial, of terror and pain, she contorted in his arms.
She whipped free and clawed her way to the car door.
Lucien reached frantically for her. “Kate!”
Chapter Three
Lucien jolted forward, but fear gave Kate more speed than he’d suspected her capable. Her foot connected with his left temple as she scrambled for the door.
His ears rang.
The world shifted out of focus.
Only the crisp chill of the late February night on his skin as she fled the SUV steadied him. “Stop!”
He climbed from the rig, slowing his quick lope to retrieve the blanket that had covered her from the gritty cement of the parking lot. Bunching the blanket in his fist, he spotted her alabaster figure streaking toward drooping magnolias that skirted the rest area.
He sprinted after her.
New hope spiked his pulse and forced his legs to pump faster.
She wasn’t running to the highway and possible help there.
Nor was she genuinely running from him.
Kate was running from herself.
“Catch her, Luc. Quickly. I tracked the scent of a rogue vampyr leading into the swamp, but the trail doubles back to—”
Her scream cut off.
Her body crumpled into thigh-high weeds ahead. Overhanging tree branches filtered light from the crescent moon through dead leaves that twisted in the breeze and choked off the moon’s feeble glow.
He could not see her.
“Kate,” Lucien shouted, dread turning his blood to glaciers in his veins. “Run! Get up and run.”
A black shadow rose above the area she’d fallen. Her hair trailed from the interloper's clenched fist. The silhouette yanked her shoulders and chest off the ground.
“Stop right there.” The shadow held a dagger to her slender neck. Lush ruby gleamed wet and vibrant in a spear of moonlight. “One more step and I’ll slit her throat.”
Lucien stumbled, but he didn’t stop. He snarled instead, rage overwhelming his fear.
“You’re killing her, vampyr!” He dug the blade’s lethal tip into her carotid. “She’ll bleed out if I cut her open. You know I’ll do it.”
Lucien halted precious feet away. He panted through clenched teeth, his body taut with helpless fury.
“I’m coming, Luc. Distract him.”
Kate’s hands rose, tearing at the fist in her hair. Her mouth opened to release
a shrill scream.
The vampyr hit her.
The sharp crack of his hand meeting her cheek fractured the night, splitting the quiet like a clap of lightning on splintering wood.
Her head rocked back.
Her hands lowered, her keening wail silenced by the blow.
Every muscle in Lucien’s body coiled. “For that alone, you will die.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” The shadow laughed. “Move into the light—just one step.”
“You’ll pay.” He stiffly complied, noting the red mark on Kate’s cheek when the wind shifted and moonlight danced across her pale skin. “With blood, you will pay.”
“My God. It is you.” The vampyr rogue snapped upright, carelessly jerking Kate by the tether of her hair. “Luc, you astonish me. I wouldn’t have believed you mature enough to take a female through the transition, but you must have managed it. You couldn’t have stolen her. No elder would have allowed such a weak boy near his woman.”
He let the vampyr’s contempt stoke his anger. “She’s my ward.” Adrenaline pumped through him harder, faster, preparing his body to fight. “And I’m mature enough to take your head… Tobias, isn’t it?”
The other vampyr tipped his head in derisive acknowledgment.
Lucien’s lips stretched to a feral bow. “I’ve been looking for you,” he said on a pleased drawl.
“And now I have found you,” the vampyr crooned, voice taunting and cruel. “How many years have you wasted searching for me?”
Lucien tensed. “Ninety.”
Tobias’s smile bared incisors stained ruddy with blood. “Since Garrick fled the field of battle and we were paired to fight the war together—to your misfortune.” He snickered. “I was disappointed to learn I failed to kill you. Leaving your dry carcass would’ve paved my way. But I should’ve taken your head.”
Lucien pushed those gut-clenching memories aside and nodded. “It’s the only way to be sure.”
“Ah well, we were both young and foolish once.”
At last, Tobias released Kate’s hair, but his knife still stabbed into the soft flesh of her neck. Lucien didn’t dare leap on him with the weapon at her throat.
Damn it.
“Have you faired better with Malachi as your elder?”
Lucien bit back a frustrated howl.
Was the cursed traitor going to fight him or talk him to death?
“I need time. Keep him busy.”
Tobias spoke of his betrayal as if it were inconsequential, the ambush that had nearly destroyed him as though a schoolyard squabble—and Garrick wanted Lucien to encourage the bastard to chat?
One glance at Kate, dark eyes numb and vacant, persuaded Lucien to swallow his bloodlust. And his pride. “Malachi fights with honor and skill. I trust him with my life,” he said, voice stilted and flat. Then, foul temper got the best of him. “I survived your turning only because I was never so witless as to place the same trust in you. Brother.”
Tobias threw back his head and laughed, a twisted, sick sound that made Lucien’s fingers shake with the need to wrap them around his throat, choke that roar of snide amusement off with his bare hands.
“Discipline, Luc. Control. Have you forgotten everything I taught you?”
He bristled. “He tried to kill me. If not for Mal, he would have succeeded.”
“You were reckless. He hopes to taunt you to that same recklessness now. You risk your ward with these outbursts. Think of her, Luc. Be wary and sly—for Kate. Please.”
Tobias’s eyes sparkled wicked glee. “You’re a petulant child, but a brilliant one. I’ll grant you that. I always thought you the brains behind your and Garrick’s pairing.” His eyebrow arched. “Where is he?”
“Who?” Lucien feigned a confused scowl. “Garrick?”
“If you have the female, he will not be far.”
“I don’t know where he is. Ecuador, last I heard. Maybe Honduras. Somewhere in Central America, anyway.” He forced a careless shrug, though his muscles felt rigid as cement. “She hasn’t finished the transition from human to vampyr. Garrick wouldn’t have had time to reach us and were he close, as her guardian, I’d be the last to know.”
“Perhaps.” Tobias leaned forward. “Garrick’s a brute, forever muscling in when simple diplomacy would suffice.” He dug the dagger into Kate’s throat, and she cried out. Bright crimson trickled down the white column of her neck. “What say you we strike a deal?”
“Bargain? You want to negotiate?” Lucien’s lips curved to a sardonic sneer. “There is one female and two of us. What kind of deal can be had? Unless you have the wisdom of Solomon.” He waved a hand at Tobias’s knife. “Do you mean to cut the baby—the woman—in half?”
The rogue vampyr wrenched his wrist.
The blade gouged a cut an inch long, too shallow to bleed her out, but no less threatening.
Lucien’s heart froze.
Tobias would kill her. Easily. Slaughtering Kate would be no different to Tobias than stomping a cockroach under his heel, but her death would be infinitely more satisfying to him.
Anything that destroyed Lucien was bound to make his old headhunting partner happy.
He tried to swallow, but his mouth had gone bone-dry.
Garrick was right.
Provoking Tobias wasn’t wise.
The vampyr glowered at him. “Do not try my patience again, boy. You will not like the results. Nor will your ward.”
Lucien’s stomach lurched. “We won’t need a treaty if you kill her.”
The rogue rolled his eyes, huffed out his frustration. “I don’t want to kill her. Or you.”
Surprise kicked Lucien’s adrenaline up another notch. “No?”
“No. Killing each other in battle over her is counterproductive and wholly unnecessary—if we share her.”
Lucien reached for the discipline Garrick had spent centuries drilling into him. Tobias’s devious maneuvering wouldn’t goad him to act rashly—and foolishly—again.
Instead, he studied his old partner.
He assessed.
As Garrick had taught him.
Tobias’s skin shone waxy and pale in the moonlight. Not the translucence of a long fast, but a sallow color that told Lucien their arrival must have interrupted his feeding. No rogue vampyr would negotiate at full strength, no matter how little he intended to uphold his part in it. What was Tobias up to? “I fight in the rebellion. You’ve gone rogue. There can be no sharing between us.”
“Think carefully. Use the exceptional brain I credit you with.” His voice smooth and beguiling, Tobias traced the edge of the knife in a curve along Kate’s neck, from the lobe of one ear to the other. The blade moved in a pendulous arc Lucien was sure Tobias intended to be mesmerizing.
It made his skin crawl.
It made him want to rip Tobias’s arm off and beat him with it.
“You as her guardian, and I as her mate. She can be ours many years. What can you offer her alone? You’re young. You haven’t thought of building a lair yet. You’ve nowhere to shelter her. Centuries older, I have such a sanctuary that my dark brothers do not know. Together, we can provide the woman every comfort and the luxury of our combined protection. Garrick would never be so generous.”
Lucien’s lips thinned.
The blood oath required between paired headhunters, though the link had been long dormant between he and Tobias, still yielded glimpses into his mind, his thoughts, his emotions.
The vampyr fantasized about forcing Kate to kill.
To kill him, her guardian.
To turn.
Lucien’s skin prickled with the intensity of Tobias’s sick excitement. “You speak prettily, but you believe me simple. No headhunter could ally with a rogue.”
Tobias grinned. “Ah, but you are near to turning. Do not think to lie. I can smell it on you.” The knife at Kate’s throat slowed to a stop. “Why not? Why shouldn’t you turn? Your rebel council is weak. Useless. They’d have us crawl on our bellies like dogs
to beg scraps at the humans’ table.” He snorted ripe disgust. “Embrace what nature designed us to be. As I have. The dominant species.”
Lucien’s jaw clenched. “Damn it, Garrick, where are you?”
“Behind him. Keep talking.”
“Hurry.”
“I am not so long from the stables that I don’t remember it.” He inched forward. “I’m not as close to turning as you wish to believe.”
“Now, who speaks prettily?” Tobias held his ground. “Do you lie to me—or to yourself?”
He angled his jaw and waved a dismissive hand to mask the movement of his next furtive step. “Have you collected them yet? Have you tried? Not successfully. If you had, you’d have sent servants to finish me years ago.” Lucien forced a condescending chuckle, horrifically aware of the certainty of that. “And you call me the liar.” He shook his head. “You need to transition slaves to become a master, Tobias.”
He hissed furious warning.
Lucien laughed. “You can’t, can you? There’s still too much of the stables left in you that won’t stomach building one of your own. You’ve tried, but dark as you are, you can’t stand to enslave our young as they do.”
“I can. I will.” Rage made Tobias’s voice shake. “You’ve been in the stables and lived to escape them. We both watched lesser, weaker vampyr die.” He dipped a finger in the blood spilling from Kate’s neck and brought a red smear to his lips to sample it.
A growl worked from Lucien’s throat. His muscles tensed, preparing him to strike.
Tobias smiled malicious satisfaction. “The stables are brutal, but nature often is. Only the strongest survive. Only the strongest should.” He shrugged a diffident shoulder. “Which is why you will turn. Unlike that muscle-bound fool Garrick, your formidable intelligence will lead you to the truth: the rebels are losing this war.”
Lucien’s eyes narrowed. “Our numbers are increasing. Every night more slaves are freed.”
“Every night more of you die.” Tobias sniffed his contempt. “Are you not weary of your life in hiding? Do you not tire of running from us? Of constantly bending knee to the precious humans and the weakest of our kind?”
Lucien schooled his feature to a blank mask, fought to disregard the cajoling pitch of the rogue’s voice.