The children gasped as Jacob was knocked to a knee, rolled away. As George came after him, bringing the sword down, Jacob writhed around it, punched him in the jaw and followed it up with a shove from his foot. George toppled backward. In the blink of time he was on his back in the dirt, Jacob was up, his blade at his throat. Immediately, he backed off, bowed and awaited George’s next move.
“I yield,” George called out with a rueful smile. There were some cheers, some groans, depending on which knight the child had decided to champion.
Grinning, Jacob handed George up and the two men embraced. George said something that earned a quick laugh from Jacob. He rubbed his arm, as if indicating George’s sword blow well could have turned the tide in his favor.
Then her servant turned, found her in the crowd. Seeking his lady’s approval of his victory. Emotional and physical response flooded her in such a hard wave she drew in a breath as if she’d just felt a sharp pain. As he moved toward her, his eyes rested on her face with that potent absorption that made her have a craving to devour him alive, their impressionable audience notwithstanding. Trying to slow her rapid heartbeat, she let her attention move from his face to the broad shoulders and the sweat that dampened the front of the thin tunic. The capable way he still held the sword, as if it were an extension of his hand. The graceful power of his body as he walked toward her.
Looking at him was not doing a thing to slow her heart rate.
Bou was walking alongside without reins to guide her. When they reached the wall, the children were already pressing forward with the supervision of the Faire people. As Bou bent her head to allow herself to be touched, Jacob placed a hand on her neck.
“My lady,” he spoke. “Have I won your favor? Am I deserving?”
More than you know. However, Lyssa rose, tossed her hair. “I know not. Perhaps it was as much luck as skill that won you the game, since the other man’s horse stumbled, costing him the second lance.”
There were jeers and boos. Jacob placed a hand over his heart as if he’d been struck, staggering back to laughter.
“What say all of you?” she called out. The children shouted out their opinions immediately, and Terry guided them on the predominant call of “Favor! Favor!” even as George scowled ferociously and yelled his disagreement, waving his arms in a gesture to silence them all.
Jacob raised a brow as they quieted at last. “It seems they have more faith in my abilities than my lady does.”
I have too much faith in your abilities. It makes me fear for you.
Despite the dark thought she blocked from Jacob, she accepted Terry’s hand to proceed down the bleachers until she stood just above him. Removing her scarflike net and kissing the jeweled fabric, she tied it on his arm, letting her hand linger on the sleeve of his tunic to feel the muscle beneath. As the audience cheered, she heard John hollering out his approval and Elijah’s whistle. Jacob wound his fingers in a loose lock of her hair and tugged, giving her one of his smiles.
“Fortunate scarf, to get a taste of your lips.” Those vivid blue eyes locked on her. “What must I do to win such an honor? Slay a dragon? Lead an army?”
Refuse to do anything, even in my service, that would make you turn away from me or love me less than you do today.
She covered his surprised mouth with hers before he could respond to the thought she’d given him as clearly as a spoken sentence. She knew how much of his heart was worrying over what he would help her do next week, knew there was nothing she could do to stop it. He was right. She had to have the blood. Perhaps, with the time being as short as it was, she should have been like Carnal and simply taken a criminal life. But as powerful as she was, and knowing what the disease could do to her emotional control in its later stages, she couldn’t take the risk of being influenced by the blood of an evil carrier.
Nothing could make me love you any less, my lady. I love you more every day. How many times must I tell you that my life is yours to command?
Earlier, she’d told him she loved him. It was not the first time she’d said it, but now she knew she should never say the words again. How could it even come close to meaning what it meant when he said it? She was accepting the type of love from him she’d already given up the right to offer in return.
She knew the world was more than the two of them. During rational moments, she knew giving him the third mark had made sound sense. He’d as much as pointed that out. But during other moments she wondered if the stories and legends she’d always ignored had been right. If vampires were in fact evil, and she’d drawn a good man into Hell.
Because he wasn’t just sacrificing his life for her. He was offering her everything, including the right to tarnish the integrity of his soul.
Chapter 12
Jacob watched Carl Ronin step out of the upscale sushi bar and bid his friends good night. Turning up the collar of his jacket, he began to stride down the cobblestone street that marked the downtown art district. It reminded Jacob that not six blocks away was the Eldar Salon, where he’d convinced his lady to consider taking him as her servant. Tonight he faced the most difficult part of being one.
He would stand by, waiting as she took the life of a man who had done nothing to deserve his life being cut short. Then he would dispose of the body for her. Through his extensive research, he knew Carl worked for an ad agency. He was currently between girlfriends, though he’d been close to marrying the last one. If he had, it would have saved his life, for Lyssa didn’t take married men as her annual kill. So thorough was his lady in her research, Jacob even knew that Carl had two dogs and he’d made provision in his will that they should be given to an old army buddy if he ever became unexpectedly deceased. He had a downtown apartment within walking distance of this bar that he visited twice a week.
He had no idea his life would end tonight.
His Mistress materialized so easily out of the shadows Jacob didn’t even see from which direction she came. Wearing a black cocktail dress and a shawl, she looked as if she’d just come from a party. She asked Ronin for directions to a small bistro not far from his apartment, so it was natural for them to fall into step together, him offering to show her there. Her hand lightly moved to his arm, drawing his attention there. She was already releasing her vampire pheromones. She’d apparently decided to do it early, not taking any chances of things going wrong.
Carl’s dick would be getting hard, making him believe he was feeling some type of instant attraction to her, a connection that would erode barriers typically held in place by commonsense suspicion.
When she laughed at something he said, she took a more secure grip on his biceps as she apparently made a misstep in her skinny heel. His hand naturally slid around her waist. As she looked up at him through her lashes, Jacob knew Carl was thinking he’d walked into his best luck of the eve ning, maybe his entire life.
When Gideon had taken him on his very first vampire hunt, Jacob had fought the anxiety and fear in all the usual ways. With denial, avoidance, acceptance, analysis. He hadn’t realized how valuable the privacy of his own thoughts was for that pro cess. Several times over the past couple of days, when he hadn’t been able to mask his building reaction to what was coming, she’d reiterated that he didn’t need to come with her, that she’d do this on her own. He’d finally asked her—begged her, actually—to just to stay out of his mind until it was over. He was her servant. He’d do what needed to be done. She wasn’t going alone.
Gideon’s visit had been too recent. What if he was still out there with a team to interfere, to catch her unawares? What if Carl was more resourceful than expected? As long as she was at full strength and awareness, no one could sneak up on her. But therein lay his concern, and one of the reasons he himself had pushed her to do what she’d put off for months.
The pheromones were doing their job, or maybe just her proximity alone, which Jacob knew could play havoc with a man’s senses. When Carl’s hand slid lower, to the top of her buttock, she pressed clos
er to him, giving him a view of her cleavage.
He should feel nothing but sympathy for the man, glad that he could take pleasure in a woman’s body in his last moments of life. Instead Jacob tamped down a desire to break his fingers for touching his Mistress. Jesus, jealous of a soon-to-be-dead man who was responding to a chemical inducement, like a drug.
Compared to previous annual kills, she was hurrying it along. From Thomas he knew that in earlier years she’d enjoyed her prey, even spent most of the eve ning with him, taking her own carnal pleasure while giving him the sensual experience of his life. She hadn’t used compulsion or pheromones to anesthetize him until the actual kill moment.
He knew enough about vampires, let alone his Mistress, to know that dallying with prey fulfilled a vampire’s fetish for power and control. Holding a life in her hand before extinguishing it. The same way she might part her red, wet lips to blow out a flame and leave a room in darkness.
They’re predators, not minions of evil. He remembered his words to Gideon and used them to balance him now. All predators, though having to kill to survive, took some plea sure in the kill, for lack of a better word. A predator’s nature was one of dominance, power. Each kill confirmed that dominance, the fine line between predator and monster, murderer. He believed his lady when she said this one life was all she took for her survival each year, but she might be incapable of not deriving some pleasure from the act.
Jesus, what was the matter with him? She was taking a man’s life in order to prolong her own, not for her own selfish reasons, but because she knew the lives of the vamps in her territory and the whole structure of vampire society might rest on how long she could maintain the illusion of her power and existence. He understood that. But could Carl please just remove his fucking hand from her ass?
You will never be comfortable with how I view your species…
He closed his eyes. He wished she’d get it over with so he could just act, do something other than sit here and think about what was about to happen. When she turned the corner, he eased the car off the side street. They would cut through the park. She would draw Carl into the shadows of the trees. At that point, he would want nothing more than to be inside her. And she’d bite him…
She’d opened her mind to him now so he could follow her. Carl made a joke, a fairly good one, about the type of things a lady might encounter in the park at night. He was still feeling lust, his mind alive with the things he wanted to do with her, but through his lady’s eyes Jacob noticed Carl simultaneously kept a lookout around them. Protective. Protective of her, a woman he’d only met a few moments ago, because he’d been raised a gentleman. Chivalrous.
Jacob noticed she asked Carl nothing about himself. She kept the conversation on the present, the bar he was just at, the beauty of the night, how far his apartment was…
Reaching up, Lyssa caressed Carl Ronin’s jaw with her fingers. “You are perhaps a little too good,” she murmured.
He raised a brow. “Then tell me how I can be not so good.”
She smiled. “Kiss me.”
Lyssa brought his head down to her, stood on her toes as he framed her face, closed his eyes and brought their mouths together. He didn’t rush it, demonstrating the prowess of a good, experienced lover. Leaning into him, she rubbed her abdomen against his aroused cock, signaling what she wanted. When he broke the kiss, lifting his head, she moved to his throat, licking him, nibbling. His arms tightened around her back, moving down to mold his palms over her ass and discover that stockings were all she wore.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “You’re a gift from Heaven.”
“Or Hell,” she said softly. When he smiled against her hair, Lyssa felt the pull of it against her temple. She sank her fangs, slow and easy, into his skin, increased the hold of her arm around his back and waist as he jumped, startled. She shot a full measure of pheromones into his bloodstream so the alarm was brief, vanishing as if it had never been.
He groaned, jerking against her touch, the flood pushing him to a hard, brutal orgasm, dampness spreading across his trousers. She massaged him through his clothes, giving him the full measure of satisfaction as she began to drink.
“I…Jesus, I’m sorry…Oh, God …”
“Sssh…there will be time for more. Let me just touch you …” Lyssa slid one hand to the side of his skull and cradled his jaw with the other, tilting his chin up. She rose on her toes, her fingers sliding into his hair to take a tighter hold.
Though he knew it didn’t make sense, Jacob shut his eyes again, wishing he could shut out the image.
Pain. So excruciating he thought somehow he’d connected to the man’s mind and was learning a snapped neck was not as painless as it had always been supposed. But this was not Carl Ronin’s pain. It was Lyssa’s. Blinding, rocketing through her head, so fast and brutal she’d been unable to close her shields, something she’d never let happen before. Jacob received it full force through his own temples, in his gut where it gnashed like one of those sharp-toothed parasites in a space movie, tearing through the lining, loosening his bowels. Lights flashing…
“Shields, my lady …” He was out of the car and trying to run, though he could barely see, staggering. “My lady…shields. So I can…help you …”
He gasped it, heard her cry out, a scream of agony. Adrenaline shot through him, diluting the hold of the pain. His will kicked in to carry him through the crimson mist, his mind telling him this was psychological. She was experiencing the pain, not him. Only when the end came would the pain be real, since he would die with her. And this was not that moment, damn it.
But his lady never cried out. No matter the pain he’d seen her suffer thus far, she kept quiet. The way a wild animal in pain kept silent, not wanting to draw the attention of another predator. One only cried out when one preferred a predator to end the pain instead of prolonging it.
Somehow though, she heard him. Suddenly the pain throbbed away like fading strobe light, the nausea pushing one last, lingering sick wave through his stomach before it, too, dissipated. He lengthened his strides, coming over the hill that overlooked the copse of trees in the park they’d specifically chosen for its isolation.
Lyssa was collapsed on the ground, trying to struggle to a sitting position. Her hair was disheveled, dress rucked up from her collapse. As she lifted her head, the moonlight shone on her elongated fangs and reflected the red of her eyes that came through most strongly when she fed. Even from his distance, anyone would know she wasn’t human.
He saw Carl’s hand was on his neck, fingers soaked with blood. He stared down at his shirt where drops had splattered. The flowing stream of it had turned his collar bright red. Slowly he raised his head, his eyes widening as he saw her fangs, the preternatural light in her eyes.
He backpedaled, stumbled, turned and began to run. Jacob’s gaze darted between him and his lady. Her head dropped, her body shuddering. Her strength apparently deserted her, for her arms went out from under her and she rolled to her side. Convulsions shuddered through her, but even amidst her fogged, pain-filled brain, her mind spoke to him.
Let him go. It doesn’t matter.
The rejuvenating blood of an annual kill combined with the third mark would give her more time, widen the space between the episodes again. Give her more time to protect her territory. Maybe give her more time for something to change. Even a cure. Debra had said Brian thought they were close to something.
Something, anything that would give him more time with her. He could feel his soul hanging in the balance, but didn’t know what decision would damn or absolve it. He’d made an oath to protect her with his life. An oath she’d just exonerated him from. But she’d also told him that no matter what, he had to put her desire to protect her territory, her people, first.
Let him go…
His attention went back to her, curled on the ground, suffering. His lady.
His feet were in motion before he even realized he was moving, and then he was running. A lean
, strong man, skimming low over the grass of the tended park where children came to play and lovers to tryst, lying on picnic blankets and drinking wine. Where people brought a book to read. Where old women fed pigeons and businessmen read their papers on their lunch hour.
Things that had nothing to do with now, when the park belonged to things of the night, beings with dark intentions.
He’d hoped Carl wouldn’t see him coming, but the man’s survival instinct had kicked into high gear. As Jacob came out of the trees less than twenty feet from him, Ronin cursed, increased his stride. Panic made him jerky but adrenaline gave him a speed he’d probably never realized before.
Jacob caught him anyway.
Lyssa rose on one shaky arm in time to see her servant take Carl Ronin down, like a wolf single-mindedly pulling a stag to his knees by the scruff of the neck. He knocked Carl face-first into the turf, planted his knee into his back. Before Carl could speak more than one muffled plea into the grass, Jacob had jerked his head up with both hands. In one violent, powerful move he twisted it, cracking the spine, severing the connection to the brain. Just time for that one short, desperate cry. Less than a second of time, but one that seemed to echo through the park like it was a canyon.
It was nothing Thomas could have done for her. Even if he had Jacob’s strength or skills as a fighter, she wasn’t sure he would have done it for her. Of the handful of servants she’d had throughout her life, she couldn’t think of one that would have done this. Rex would have, but it would have meant no more to him than picking up meat at the market. Where the life of the creature it had once been was neatly hidden away by precise cuts and cellophane packaging.
Jacob rose to one knee, breathing hard, though she knew it wasn’t physical exertion. Her head was pounding, making her too dizzy to read his thoughts, but she wondered if she would have had the courage to do so even if she could.
VQ 02 - The Mark of the Vampire Queen Page 18