Nicholas’s dark gaze turned sympathetic. “You know what I mean. I respect the fact that he is your biological—”
“He is nothing but a missing balas!” The words were like cut glass in his mouth. “Now get out of my way before I help you.”
Nicholas didn’t move. “If you want to prove something, it would be better served to work together.”
“Not this time.”
“I know what you’re doing. You think you owe him, that you’re making up for not knowing about his existence.”
The rumbling in Erion’s chest exploded into a full-fledged growl of warning. “Don’t tell me what I’m feeling.”
“I know—”
“You know nothing,” Erion hissed, something tightening in his chest, something he wanted nothing to do with. “You and I have no understanding of each other, our histories, our perspectives.”
“Is this about the past? About our mother and what she did to you?” Nicholas shook his head. “If so, you have nothing to make up for. I truly believe you were better off.”
“That veana may have used you, brother, hurt you, but at least she wanted you.”
Nicholas laughed bitterly. “Oh, she wanted me. She wanted me for my mouth and my ass after she could no longer service those pieces of shit herself.” He turned away for a moment, his nostrils flaring, trying to catch his breath. “What does any of this have to do with Ladd?”
Erion could barely feel, barely think, he was so pumped up on adrenaline and anger and fear. “I cannot . . .”
“What? What, Erion?”
His gaze lifted and his eyes found his twin’s. He shook his head miserably. “The balas will not think, will not believe—ever—no matter where he ends up—that I did not want him.”
There was a moment of silence between them, and Nicholas’s eyes softened. “You don’t have to do this alone for him to know that.”
Erion straightened his shoulders, shoved away the sentiment and emotion. “I must find him. I. Must find him.”
“You are being irrational. And it’s dangerous for the boy.”
“My passion, my drive, will bring the boy home. You will see.”
Nicholas released a grave sigh. “God, I hope so.”
Erion bit into his wrist, then grabbed his brother’s and bit into his flesh too. Nicholas cursed, but he allowed Erion to press the two bloody gashes together.
“Now we are connected,” Erion said, his eyes locked on his twin. “Feel for me within yourself if Cruen contacts you.”
Without waiting for an answer, Erion ripped his arm away and pushed past Nicholas to the door. He had to get back to his search, to his prisoner. The moment he stepped out of the house, the moment he felt sun on his face, he flashed.
In seconds, he landed on another lawn, in another country. It was night and the rain had stopped. Erion ran his bloody wrist along the lock, then waited for the gate to draw back. It had barely swung two feet before he saw the front door to the castle burst open. One of his servants came running out, followed by the brown-and-white canine. Both barreled down the small incline and through the vines.
Breathless, the dog on his heels, the servant halted before Erion. “Your prisoner, sir.”
Instantly alert, Erion said, “What about her?”
The servant’s mouth formed a grim line and his eyes were wide with anxiety.
“What?” Erion demanded, a sudden caustic panic gripping him. “Has she escaped again?”
The male shook his head.
He grabbed the male by the collar and said in the deadliest of voices, “Tell me before I gut you.”
“She has eaten Timothy,” the male squeaked.
At first Erion didn’t believe he’d heard the servant correctly. But one look at the male’s utterly terrorized face and he knew it was true.
“Christ!” he uttered, tossing the male aside and immediately flashing up to the house.
Goddamn female! What the hell had she done? And, more importantly, what the hell was she? Humans didn’t eat flesh, and vampires drank only blood.
He stalked into the house and down the many hallways that led to the door and the dungeon stairs. Whatever she was, he wouldn’t tolerate her making meals out of his staff.
• • •
Return . . .
Return her to me—
Cruen opened his eyes and snarled at the plants surrounding him in the rooftop greenhouse. He couldn’t even send a message to the walls of the Roman brothers’ compound. He couldn’t get through their enchantments.
He grabbed at a violet bloom and ripped it from its stem. For too many years to count he had been all-powerful, divine, feared, and formidable. Sending a message to anyone, anywhere, took only a brief thought, such little effort.
Now he was . . . what? Like all the other vampires? Limited powers. He didn’t know how to exist in the realm he now found himself in.
Erion had taken his key to continued power, his key to unlimited life, and to his work developing the ultimate vampire.
Erion had taken the key that would finally unlock the door to Cruen’s true love.
Celestine.
He had to find the female. But how was he to get to his mutore son? He couldn’t use any of his advanced magic. And he couldn’t go to the source of his power and ask for it.
He crushed the flower in his fist. He couldn’t bring Abbadon into this. The demon king would make Cruen pay, make him go without a feeding until Hellen was found. Abbadon would consider her abduction Cruen’s incompetence, but the fact that Cruen’s adopted son had done the deed . . . well, that might just make the Demon King forget their union altogether.
And Cruen couldn’t allow that.
Without Abbadon’s blood, he was a worthless paven.
“Gale!” he shouted.
The male came at once, had no doubt been hovering near the door. “Yes, my lord?”
“Are the Demon King’s daughters comfortable?”
“Yes, my lord.” The male cocked his head. “Should we continue to make them so?”
Cruen’s lip curled in pure menace and warning. “You will treat them as the royalty they are while I am away.”
The male nodded, his gaze sweeping low. “You are traveling, my lord?”
He tossed away the broken and battered bloom. “It seems I must.”
• • •
“I have tied you up! Is that not enough to contain your wickedness? Do you need a muzzle as well?”
Hellen watched the male, Erion, pace from one end of the dungeon to the other, his black hair hanging to his hard jawline, his diamond eyes fixed on her, his lips forming a sneer. His wide shoulders were rolled forward. Every thick muscle she could see outlined in the jeans and black T-shirt he wore flexed and bunched as if he was ready to attack. He was a fearsome sight, and she licked her lips, tasting the blood of his guard.
Metallic and unsatisfying.
“You seem tense, Male,” she said, her gaze trained on him, wondering what he would do next, how he would deal with her. “Hasn’t my fiancé contacted you yet?”
Erion’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t stop moving. “You should be the one who’s concerned. Perhaps Cruen doesn’t value you as you believed.”
She refused to even contemplate that. “Or perhaps he doesn’t want to give back the prize he took from you, bloodsucker.”
A fearsome growl erupted from his throat, and he whirled on her. “I swear to all that is unholy, if you eat another member of my household, I will bleed you out and you’ll see my bloodsucker tendencies firsthand.”
She plastered on a false expression of trepidation. She knew he wouldn’t kill her, his leverage. “A vile threat indeed.”
“You push me too far, woman.”
“Hellen.”
“Whatever,” he growled, turning away from h
er and resuming pacing.
She pulled at the cuffs encircling her wrist. “I was hungry, okay?”
“The guard brought you food. Did he not?” Erion said through tightly gritted teeth.
“It wasn’t fresh.”
He growled again.
“And how was I supposed to eat it?” she continued. “With my toes?”
He was in her face in under a breath. Nostrils flared, chest heaving, he towered over her. Hellen had been around males her whole life, and as she’d grown and bloomed into womanhood she’d seen how some males began to regard her. Not like they did her sisters, but there were the ones who had found her attractive, the ones who made her laugh and fought rogue demons beside her. But never in all that time had a male looked at her like this one did. Hate and fear and sadness and hunger and . . . lust?
She drew back as far as she could go, her shoulders hitting the wall.
Who was this bloodsucker? And what did he want from Cruen? She knew Cruen had to be a fiend in his own right—after all, who would pay for a mate but someone who craved power, someone without empathy? Someone very similar to her father, Abbadon. Did this male who looked as though she were something he wished to unwrap and discover only desire the power of her being?
Should she care? Should she even wonder? After all, her main objective had to be escape. Or . . . if given the chance, this male’s demise.
His gaze was moving over her face. Only when he came to her eyes did he speak. “My guards are not on the menu. Understand?”
She couldn’t help herself. She breathed him in, cold air and hot skin.
“Do you hear me, woman?”
Hear you, scent you . . . Her ankles flickered with heat. Gods, she needed her draft. “When they are perverted little fucks who attempt to touch me, they are.”
Erion’s eyes widened and a feral growl vibrated from his throat. “What did you say?”
“Seriously, I have to repeat it?”
He cocked his head to the side and uttered in the deadliest of voices, “He touched you?”
“Above the waist. If he’d tried to go lower I would’ve had to play with my food first before I ate it.”
His gaze cut to her chest.
Just the quick look made her demon heat flare an inch higher. Shit. “I may not be all that hot in the face department, but I do have killer tits.”
The bloodsucker’s eyes lifted and he appeared confused. “You believe yourself unattractive?”
“Does it matter?”
“I find it curious.”
She shrugged. “My face. The shape, the features. It’s not all . . . It’s—”
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”
Silence fell between them, and Hellen wasn’t at all sure what to say, what to think. She was locked up in a dungeon, prisoner to the male before her while her skin grew hotter with each breath she took.
He had called her beautiful. He stood before her, watching her, guarded, yet clearly confused on what had just transpired between them—what he had allowed himself to say.
It wasn’t good.
They were prisoner and jailer. No bond was to be formed, no matter how many compliments were tossed her way.
She forced her gaze from him. “Look,” she began in a tight voice. “Your guard thought the best course of action was to feed me with one hand and cop a feel with the other. And, well . . . Hellen don’t play that.”
“I understand.” His voice was stone and ice.
Her gaze seemed to drag itself back to his.
“I apologize, Hellen,” he said, his mouth grim, his eyes flaring with anger. “It will not happen again.”
“Why should I believe anything you say?”
“I do not keep you here for my own sadistic amusement. It is because I have no choice.”
She laughed softly. “You have a choice.”
“Have you ever cared about someone, Hellen?” His eyes burned into hers. “So deeply, so desperately you would sacrifice everything for them—including your code of honor?”
Yes. Yes, she thought. Her sisters. She would give anything, everything to keep them safe. But she couldn’t tell him that. She couldn’t risk the possibility that he would use the information to get back whatever it was he so desperately wanted.
Before she was forced to say something, anything that was not the truth, there was noise on the stairs behind them.
“Sir?”
“What?” Erion said, irritated, ripping his gaze from Hellen and turning around.
The guard reached the bottom step and stopped. He eyed Hellen and blanched, then slowly backed up the stairs.
“You have turned my guards into pussies,” Erion muttered.
“Maybe you’ll be next,” she said, then added, “Erion.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “You know my name.”
Your name, yes, but not your game.
“Sir?”
“What is it?” Erion grumbled, turning back to the guard.
“There is a message from your brothers.”
“He has brothers,” Hellen said softly. Are they a part of this deal? she wondered. This abduction? Has Cruen taken them or hurt them? Is that what the bloodsucker wishes to get back?
“That’s not possible,” Erion told the guard. “I was just with them.”
“He said it was urgent, sir.” His voice lowered. “About the boy.”
Hellen’s blood jumped in her veins. Boy. What boy?
Erion walked toward the guard, his large, powerful body tense. “He said it was urgent?” His voice was lethal. “Who is he?”
Hellen’s eyes cut between Erion and the guard as the temperature in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees.
The guard’s nostrils flared with nerves. “The courier at the gate, sir.”
Hellen heard Erion curse, then suddenly take off up the stairs.
“What boy?” she yelled after him, but he was gone, the guard with him.
6
There were three stages of fire in target shooting: slow, timed, and rapid. Synjon had been at it for an hour and every round he went ended up rapid. He had no patience for conventional practice rules. Removing magazine after magazine, reloading again and again, aim and shoot—that’s all he was after. Hit after hit until he saw the battered wall behind the face on each of his target papers.
He set the semiautomatic down and went to change the target. Shooting used to give him some form of release, some feeling of control. It was like the bite into flesh before the suck—the initial action that drew blood.
But there was no relief inside him anymore. No matter what he did. All he felt, all the bloody time, was manic darkness. And it was growing blacker every moment Cruen continued to breathe.
“How many rounds you go?”
The Roman brother’s deep, concerned voice didn’t make Synjon start. In fact, Syn had known the male was coming, catching his scent as it had drifted in from the hall.
“Not nearly enough,” Syn muttered, crushing the target paper in his fist as he walked back toward Alexander. “Glad you stopped by.”
“I think it’s you who’s stopping by.”
“Yes,” Syn said. “At long last. I’m sure Frosty’s told you what I’m after.” He picked up the semiautomatic and started to reload. “A reminder of what was promised more than seven months ago.”
Alex leaned against the wall, crossed his arms over his chest. The paven was big, his Breeding Male genes showing in every thick muscle, every predatory movement. “Vengeance.”
The word made Syn pause, look up. His eyes narrowed. “I could say ‘justice,’ but why bother? I hope there’s no problem with that.”
“None whatsoever. Except for the fact that we’re having some trouble—”
“Locating the bastar
d yourself,” Syn finished.
“Right.” The skull-shaved paven’s eyebrows drew together. “But I think I may have stumbled upon a way.”
Syn lowered his weapon. “Tell.”
“Can’t. Not yet.” He released a breath. “It involves my mate.”
“You think she knows how to get to Cruen?”
“No. But she will be affected, perhaps even hurt, if I use this possibility.”
The urge to throttle Alexander Roman until he revealed his thoughts, his plan, was almost impossible to repress. “I understand your caution, but the paven must be taken down.”
“I know,” Alex said calmly. “I just need a little time.”
“Time’s up, Roman,” Synjon said, turning from the paven and lifting his gun. “For you, me, the balas who lies in wait of a rescue, and that paven bastard who killed my veana.”
Without another word, Syn aimed at the target and fired ten rounds without blinking. All shots landed right between the eyes.
• • •
Erion burst through the front door and flash-ran down the hill toward the gate like a paven possessed. What the hell would he find waiting? Who would he find waiting? And if it was a trap, how badly could he rip the bastard apart before the male spilled the details of his plan?
His final flash brought him right to the gate’s entrance. He’d already bitten into his wrist as he traveled, and he ran it over the lock. He sprang forward as the gate allowed him access. At first he saw nothing, no one, his gaze tracking every movement the moonlight favored him with. Then a sound caught his ears, a scent too, and it was one he knew well. One that was normally accompanied by irritating wafts of dust.
“What the hell are you doing here, Raine?” he called out.
Nothing. Just wind through the trees met his query.
Erion cursed through clenched teeth. “Get over here before I’m forced to hunt you down. Your beast is a midnight snack for mine.”
He heard a whimper, then saw a flash of pale skin. Raine had stepped out from behind a wide bush and was slowly moving toward him. “I’m in deep trouble because of you.”
“You came here for an apology?” Erion said on a growl. “Truly?”
The mutore’s terrified features intensified as he drew nearer. “He knew I told you that I could be the only one.”
Eternal Demon: Mark of the Vampire Page 7