I waved a hand dismissively. “It’s not actually alive, Nosh. Don’t worry. It’s more of an…awareness. Similar to how a home has an aura about it that soothes and calms, makes you feel safe.” He nodded, following along. “Well, I lived in the castle a very long time, and magic and blood is ingrained into the very walls. We have a history, and that history has taken on a personality.”
Things like that happened when your house held the answers to thousands upon thousands of unsolved murders.
He nodded thoughtfully. “I feel the same about my tomahawks, actually. Like they are alive.”
I nodded as I considered the message he’d relayed. Even though Adam and Eve were new to their relationship with the castle, anything that made them feel alarmed was likely justified. Only one way to know for sure, especially after Nosh’s mention of the Brides of Dracula—a separate power source.
I reached out to Castle Ambrogio, idly recalling that I had pushed her away earlier when I’d been pursuing Natalie and Victoria. I’d thought she was just longing for her master, but as our bond opened between us now, I felt sweat break out on my forehead. The castle was afraid and very concerned. She felt taxed and strained as if trying to hold up a great burden. My eyes widened.
“What the hell is going on out there? Are the Sisters doing something?” I demanded.
Nosh shook his head, his shoulders tensing at the alarm on my face. “Not that I know of. This was before they even showed up.”
“What a coincidence,” I snapped sarcastically. I focused on the castle again, trying to pinpoint the problem. The castle was so focused on her own problems that she didn’t even acknowledge my presence. With no other options available, I used our bond to get a look inside the castle itself to see what Dracula was up to.
Almost instantly, a growl bubbled up from my chest. Dracula sat on my throne, and he was feasting on one of his vampires. More of his vampires were lined up before the throne, awaiting their turn. A pair of vampires was dragging the bodies away, forming an alarmingly large pile of corpses against the back wall. He was draining his own vampires, and they were letting him.
Three beautiful women wearing rich gowns were kneeling on the ground, using fresh blood to paint dizzying symbols and designs on the floor. The Brides of Dracula. And they were definitely powerful, although nowhere near as strong as Natalie and Victoria. The blackish-red blood was pulsing with power, seeming to glow with violet darkness, exuding a dark, malevolent, anti-light. Even though the particulars were unfamiliar to me, I knew that it was some kind of ritual, and it was battling the castle walls—straining the power that was keeping Dracula and his horde trapped within.
He was trying to summon someone, but who? I could sense that ingesting the blood of his own vampires was making him stronger as well. Castle Ambrogio still held him, but she couldn’t deny the obscene amount of fresh blood spilling within her. Like forcing a drug down a resistant victim’s throat, the dark blood was weakening her ability to keep him trapped. Her refusal to consent was not enough to prevent the poison he was feeding her.
He was trying to break out. Right when his old jailors knocked on my door, demanding their prisoner back. Was it a setup? Had I underestimated the Sisters of Mercy?
If the castle lost control, only Adam and Eve and a small army of vampires and werewolves stood between him and a city brimming with prey. Would the mist surrounding the castle keep him trapped or would that also fail? And I had to deal with the Sisters of Mercy on top of it all.
A part of me latched onto the suspicion that the Sisters of Mercy weren’t as benevolent as I had thought. What if they were actually here to help break him free, concealing their dark motives beneath the guise of trustworthy custodians? All I knew of the Sisters was what Izzy had told me about them, and what I had just seen them do to Izzy—which spoke volumes.
What if their true purpose in Europe had been to protect Dracula rather than the humans? That the reason they had so far failed to kill him was because they had never intended to kill him? And now they were trying to bully me into giving them custody of the bastard. The fact that they were willing to threaten me with war was an extremely desperate act.
I finally accepted the fact that sex was simply not going to happen tonight.
“The bond is growing weaker,” I finally muttered to Nosh. “He’s trying to overpower it from within. We cannot let him get out.” That was what the castle had been trying to warn me about earlier, but I had dismissed it, more concerned about my love life. Had my devils sensed anything of the sort from the castle, or had their own hormones distracted them as well?
I didn’t mention the blood ritual to Nosh because I didn’t have any helpful information to add, and nothing Dracula was doing would be in Nosh’s field of expertise. Judging by some of the symbols I had seen, it was looking more like my own area of expertise.
Because I had picked out a handful of ancient Greek letters.
Who was Dracula trying to summon? Who could possibly help him escape?
The elevator doors finally opened, and a tide of purple light suddenly bloomed ahead of us, washing over the entire space in the blink of an eye—even through the walls. I gasped in alarm as the hair on the back of my arms instantly stood up on end. The light rolled over us without harm, not actually touching us. Then it was simply gone, as if I had only imagined it.
Nosh stared wild-eyed, clutching one of his tomahawks in his fist. “What the fuck was that?” he whispered. I was simply relieved that it hadn’t been a hallucination. He had seen it too.
Aristos and Valentine were ten paces away, holding hands as they stared down a side hall. Except they were motionless—frozen in mid-stride. I’d only seen something like this one other time—when Selene had visited me. Whatever it had done to Aristos and Valentine, it hadn’t affected us.
Which was almost worse. My arms tingled with alarm as I looked over at him. “Olympians,” I hissed warily, stepping out of the elevator. Had Selene decided to pay me another visit? Or was it someone much, much worse? Dracula’s ritual with the Greek letters suddenly seemed much more relevant. Maybe his brides were more powerful than I had assumed.
Nosh slipped out of the elevator beside me, sweeping his gaze across the catacombs and curling his lip in a grim frown. “First, the castle and the Sisters, and now this. Your trouble comes in threes, father.”
I tensed at his use of the word father. We hadn’t explicitly spoken about it, but we had danced around the topic a few times.
I slowly shook my head, sensing the air as I began to creep towards my chambers. “Keep your head down, Nosh, and be ready to throw your tomahawk.” He nodded, following my lead as I crept from bookshelf to bookshelf, peering high enough to look over them but not become an easy target. I could feel the heartbeats of other vampires throughout the vast space, but they all seemed to be emanating from behind the closed doors of the storage rooms we’d converted to dormitories for them. Other than Aristos and Valentine, I saw no one in the halls.
Other than my obvious paranoia, I also sensed no immediate danger. I didn’t rely on that, deciding that any visiting Olympian was an instant threat—even if they were alleged allies. Selene had been such a great ally that she had sliced and diced Natalie with her silver claws, almost killing her.
“Any enemy in particular? I’d really rather not meet Zeus again,” Nosh muttered, looking ashamed of his admission.
I grunted. “Anyone who survives a fight with Zeus has instant credibility, Nosh. Don’t take that one personally. And that was a misunderstanding. He didn’t know you were his grandson. However, I prefer to run on the assumption that every Olympian is a threat. Even Zeus. My wife almost killed Natalie, and she was trying to help. Supposedly. I have enough friends already.”
Nosh grimaced, nodding his agreement.
I paused outside the entrance leading to my chambers. Hugo had hired a crew of laborers to come in and replace the massive wooden doors Adam and Eve had destroyed upon Selene’s last visi
t, but they now stood cracked open. The warm glow of my fireplace cast dancing shadows within, and a few dim lamps had been left on near my reading chair by one of the bookshelves. I heard water running and I tasted humidity in the air. A steaming shower was running.
I shared a long look with Nosh before slipping inside, my claws outstretched and ready for a fight. In the event of any sudden projectiles, my cloak was only a thought away—because turning into mist would only allow the projectiles to hit Nosh instead.
I swept the room with my gaze in less than a second, noticing only a single anomaly. And it was impossible to miss.
I stared, trying to wrap my mind around the danger, but I was having a very difficult time doing so. The door to the bathroom was open and I saw a naked Natalie stepping deeper into a cloud of steam—obviously in the process of entering the shower when time had been frozen. I peered past her shoulder to see Victoria already in the shower.
I slowly focused back on the room’s only uninvited occupant. “This is bullshit,” I finally cursed, glaring at the bear-skin rug before the crackling fireplace. A stunningly naked, olive skinned woman lay on her side, propped up on her elbow and supporting her head in her palm. Her long, wavy hair was streaked with both blonde and brown in equal measure, and long enough to drape over her shoulders without concealing her assets. Her perfectly shaped, Olympian breasts belonged on a twenty-year-old virgin who didn’t know any better, even though her dark smile openly flaunted that this woman had orchestrated—and participated in—an unfathomable number of coital acts that would make the most seasoned mortal whore look like a virginal babe. She definitely knew better.
I was entirely sure we were staring at Aphrodite, the goddess of love and sex. My half-sister.
Her appetite for desire broke mortal minds, and her victims loved her for it almost as much as she loved leading the poor lambs to the slaughter. Her other hand rested on her inner thigh, concealing—and simultaneously drawing attention to—her lower temptations. “This is bullshit,” I repeated, realizing that I was shockingly furious over the fact that my romantic exploits had been shut down by the naked goddess of sex lounging upon my rug. All while a naked Natalie and Victoria were frozen in the act of climbing into the shower together, waiting for me to come tend to their physical desires.
“It’s like that Burt Reynolds picture, but without the body hair and mustache,” Nosh murmured, practically drooling at the goddess. I had no idea who Burt was, or why any woman would have body hair and a mustache, but I had long ago given up on trying to decipher every pop culture reference I heard thrown into conversation.
The goddess grinned wickedly, her eyes seeming to shine with flecks of pink and purple light. “I don’t have a mustache, but I’d gladly accept a mustache ride, my sweet, succulent nephew,” the Olympian said in probably the most attractive purr I’d ever heard in my life. I felt it internally. Like she had spoken directly to my groin’s spirit animal.
Nosh flinched as if slapped, instantly averting his gaze. His cheeks were beet red, and I didn’t blame him one bit, despite my anger.
Aphrodite made bear-skin rugs look sexy.
I clenched my teeth, drowning out my instinctive urgings to grab, grope, and grind the goddess into blissful climax. Because I knew they weren’t my own thoughts. She was using her magic, knowingly or not, to influence us. “What is the meaning of this, Aphrodite?” I asked, using her name for Nosh’s benefit.
She dipped her chin approvingly at my correct guess of her name. “I came for my brother,” she said with a suggestive purr, her words heavy on the double meaning. “Hopefully, more than once, judging by the stories I’ve heard about you and your bite.” She licked her lower lip and winked. “Time is no longer a concern. We should indulge in this precious gift.”
Right. This was going to be all sorts of fun. I just knew it.
4
I narrowed my eyes, shrugging off her innuendo with a sickened frown. We were related by blood, for crying out loud. I knew incestual concerns had never stopped an Olympian before, but it was still shocking to hear it so blatantly stated. In front of my son, no less.
I’d given much thought to how I would react when I met my next Olympian. I knew how dangerous their involvement could be, and that it was only a matter of time before they began pestering me following my encounter with Zeus.
The Olympians, as pretty and elegant as they appeared on the surface, were actually savage, feral, primitive creatures. They functioned on an instinctual mindset, reading body language and working much like wild predators. They just did so in togas with beautiful coats of skin.
Any show of timidity or awe was instantly filed away for them to later use against you. That was my theory anyway.
So, I turned my back on her and calmly walked over to a nearby armoire. I opened it, pulled out a robe, and then I made my way back to the Olympian. I stopped about six inches away, staring down at her with the same look I would have given a particularly uninspiring pebble on a gravel road. She stared up at me, her smile faltering ever so slightly. I dropped the robe on her head before I turned and made my way over to the bathroom, speaking over my shoulder. “Don’t eat him, Aphrodite. He’s all bone.”
“My favorite body part,” she laughed in a lilting chime, sloughing off her momentary unease at my blank assessment of her. Once out of sight, I glanced back to make sure she didn’t try to kill Nosh. His face was a dark, dark purple as he studied the toes of his boots.
I walked into the dim, candlelit bathroom to survey my naked devils in their natural habitat. Two candles on the counter filled the steamy room with the scent of anise and fennel, thick enough that I could taste it. Before I dared take a look at Natalie and Victoria, I closed my eyes and shuddered so violently that I almost stumbled to my hands and knees. I gripped the marble counter, squeezing it so hard that it crumbled to dust with a sharp crack.
My hormones were firing in full force thanks to Aphrodite’s magic. I hadn’t acknowledged it before, but my heart was racing, and my hands were shaking. I opened my eyes after a few breaths, confident that I was back in control. Somewhat. My groin already ached worse than it ever had before, and all I had done was look at the goddess of sex.
I didn’t dare try to snap Natalie and Victoria out of their dazes or take my time trying to find a more comfortable position for them. I needed to get Aphrodite out of here as fast as possible. Any dallying on my part would only encourage her. But I didn’t want the girls to catch a chill standing around naked—especially since the room was steamy, and flesh cooled much faster than most people realized. The damp air would cling to the skin and grow chill without some source of heat.
The shower itself was an enclosed, eight-by-six, black marble room that had been wired with the most impressive shower system ever designed—according to Nero. He had belabored the fact to me in great detail, still upset that I’d taken the shower from him when I took over the bedchambers for myself.
Rather than a basic showerhead, the ceiling was almost completely covered with several massive grates that could be adjusted to replicate a curtain of heavy rainfall, light rain, thick mist, or even rotating, massaging jets—and all while illuminating the black enclosure in remote-controlled, colored lighting. The glow was currently set on a rotating function, gradually cycling through the colors of the rainbow at such a subtle speed that it was difficult to pinpoint exactly when one color changed to another. Thankfully, Victoria had turned on the heavy rain function so there was enough falling water to keep the both of them warm without me having to get wet and try to remember how to adjust all the dials on the inner wall.
I faced my first task with all the bravery of an innocent, young noble desperately clutching his full sack of gold at the doors of his first seedy whorehouse.
My eyes settled on Natalie’s tight round ass, and I was forced to bite my tongue—hard enough to draw blood—in order to remain focused on their immediate needs, not my fantastical dreams. She had managed to set one foot thro
ugh the large glass door of the steaming shower before Aphrodite had frozen time.
The blanket of thick steam was billowing out from the shower directly over Natalie. Careful to avoid the falling water, I stepped around her and partway into the shower to see that her breasts were pebbled with goosebumps from the cooler air striking her wet flesh. I winced at the razor-thin pale scar looping over one breast and under the other in a horizontal S shape—courtesy of my wife, Selene.
One of the friendly Olympians.
I leaned further into the shower and tested the water with my fingers, making sure it was hot but not scalding. The water heater for the catacombs had been upgraded long ago and was large enough to allow the showers to maintain a steady temperature for hours and hours on end, so I had no fear of the water running cold on them. But if I didn’t get them both into the full stream of hot water, they could catch a chill from standing in the mist for however long Aphrodite’s visit would last.
I finally permitted my gaze to settle on Victoria, trying to keep my priorities straight while facing the tantalizing landscape of gentle rises and dips of smooth flesh. Limned by the cool blue lights above, Victoria was staring deeply into Natalie’s fiery green eyes, and her plump lips were parted so as to breathe easier beneath the falling water. She was frozen in the act of beckoning the petite werewolf closer to her with one curled finger. Her other hand was outstretched in obvious invitation, palm up. In a mirrored motion, Natalie stared back at her, biting her lips in a tentative, innocently wicked manner as her own hand extended far enough so that two of her fingers had only just touched Victoria’s palm.
That skin-on-skin contact was the figurative signature on the unwritten, unspoken contract that the two women had negotiated with each other while waiting for me—the binding agreement that the two of them had taken the first steps into a romantic relationship of their very own.
Devil’s Blood: Shade of Devil Book 3 Page 3