by BETH KERY
He instinctively reached with his mind, sensing the lay of the land and sentient creatures in the near vicinity. When he became aware of a very fragile, weakened consciousness, he aimed in that direction in the tunnels. Revenants scrambled ahead of him. They obviously had been ordered to retreat by Morshiel, but they also were aware of Blaise approaching. They knew an encounter with him meant almost certain death.
The tunnel narrowed, enough that he had to duck his head. It became so skinny at one point that there was a scrum as the revenants all tried to squeeze into an opening, none of them wanting to be last. He ran as fast as he could, slowly eating up the space between himself and the escaping Scourge. Undoubtedly Morshiel was in the lead. If he could just reach the end of the line, it was conceivable he could fight the revenants one by one, for the tunnel width allowed only enough space for one-to-one combat. He had the definite advantage.
“You’re about to die, you cursed beasts,” he roared as he pursued.
The tunnels were very old. The ceiling and walls crumbled. Dust was rising beneath scurrying, frantic paws and pounding human feet. It burned in his lungs, and the air grew murky, making vision difficult. He blinked dirt out of his eyes. Someone ahead carried a lantern, which created a dim, bobbing light on the earthen wall. He sensed several revenants were ahead of him—perhaps several dozen—but he only could see the one who had lost the scramble at the entrance, a canid with pumping, ropey muscles running for its life.
He clearly sensed the subtle scent of wolf amongst the stench of Scourge revenant. It must be Isi. Adrenaline flooded his muscles, increasing his strength.
He was close enough to reach the canid. He clasped his hand around the bunching thigh muscle of the revenant and yanked. It barked viciously in a show of fury, but it couldn’t completely turn in the tight tunnel. The snapping, lethal fangs never reached Blaise. His heartluster plunged into the belly as if it were made of soft butter. The fierce growl of the canid morphed into a panicked yelp as it fell heavily to the ground. Blaise leapt over the body, never losing a second, snarling as he grabbed and caught the next revenant around the lower leg. The dry, rough skin told him it was a prowler. The sleek, foul beasts were more flexible in the narrow tunnel than the canids. Blaise paid for getting closer to Isi with a tear of vicious claws from shoulder to hand. The revenant let out wild death-shriek before he took off its head, the sound bouncing eerily off the narrow tunnel and sending a dire warning to all ahead.
Even though he’d cut down the canid and prowler as quickly as possible, he’d lost valuable seconds. The light was growing dimmer, but he could make out the shadow of the next fleer in line. It was someone in human form—a tall male, because he needed to hunch over in the passage as much as Blaise. He appeared to be carrying a large, bulky item. Was it Morshiel? Somehow, Blaise didn’t think so, although he did sense his clone was close.
Very close.
They were escaping, but Blaise thought he could overcome the tall man. Whatever he carried was slowing him down. He plunged ahead. He came to an abrupt halt when he almost tripped over a form crumpled at the bottom of the tunnel.
The man he’d been chasing had dropped his burden, sacrificing it for speed and escape. The only source of light faded away. He knelt warily and felt with his hands in the now pitch-darkness. It was a man. Blood smeared on Blaise’s hand. He lifted it to his nose.
He caught the scent of wolf with his keen sense of smell.
Isi.
A minute later, he came face to face with Michael Lord leading a contingent of Literati into the tunnel.
“Go back,” Blaise said. “They’ve escaped. I have Isi.”
When they reached the large chamber with the underground river, he did a quick survey of the two beheaded bodies on the ground, satisfied to see neither was a Literati.
He glanced down at the man he held. Isi was dark and youngish looking, although it was hard to fully see his features with so much blood smeared across his face, neck and chest. Blaise wished for Isi’s sake that Aubrey, with his prodigious skill for healing, had been one of the attacking Literati party. Isi’s throat had been cut nearly clean through from front to back. He was holding his severed neck together with his surrounding arm, pressing his hand down desperately against the gushing wound. The incomplete beheading would have instantly killed a human, but given Isi’s paranormal nature, he had not yet succumbed to death.
“I have to get him to Sanctuary,” he told Michael. “But there’s an unconscious canid in the tunnel over there that needs to lose his head. Do a thorough survey of all the chambers. And be careful.”
Michael nodded and started with the other Literati toward the narrow, dusty passage. Blaise headed in the other direction, intent on getting Isi to safety.
Chapter Eleven
Later that night, he retired to his quarters, feeling exhausted. Aubrey had arrived at Sanctuary and told Blaise Isi stood a fifty-fifty chance for survival. Although his neck hadn’t been completely severed, his throat and a portion of his spinal cord had. His superhuman powers of healing were working to knit the wound, but it was a close thing. He was alive, but barely. According to Aubrey, the only thing they could do was wait.
Isabel had discovered Blaise’s whereabouts soon after he’d arrived. Her face had gone white as snow when she’d seen him.
“It’s from Isi,” he said, divining that her look of horror came from believing he was covered in his own blood.
“You found him,” she said, peering into the guest suite where Isi lay.
“Yes, thanks to you.”
He’d wanted her to leave—the Iniskium warrior’s wound was gruesome—but Isabel refused to budge. Like him, she’d watched tensely as Margaret and Aubrey labored over an unresponsive Isi. She hadn’t said anything, but she hadn’t needed to. She’d stood next to him, one hand at his back, the other on his forearm. He’d taken great comfort in her presence.
A short while ago, he’d noticed how pale and drawn she looked, and refused to take no for an answer when he said she needed to rest.
“I’m so relieved you’re safe. Come in with me,” she said when he’d escorted her to her bedroom suite.
“I can’t, Isabel.”
“You can,” she whispered.
He glanced down at his blood-soaked clothing. “I’m not fit for your company.”
She smiled. “You’re always fit for my company, Blaise.”
He swallowed thickly and forced himself to look away from temptation. “I need to clean up,” he said in a cracking voice before he walked away.
He showered to get the stench of revenant blood and saliva off him. He’d longed to accept Isabel’s offer—he could always make her forget later, couldn’t he? It wasn’t different than any other occasion when he went to her room, and she believed it was the first night that they consummated their passion.
But he was covered in blood and gore. He reeked of revenant stench. He couldn’t bear to soil her further than he already had.
His wounds had almost completely healed, although the scratches on his chest were still pink with new skin, and smarted. After he showered, he lay in bed and almost immediately fell into a deep sleep.
Usan had once told him that the Magian did not dream, for they had long ago learned to decode the unconscious world and make it conscious. Blaise had formed a picture in his mind of the Magian as beings that were closer to angels than humans, and that was one of the many reasons he believed himself cursed.
What fool would mix the essences of angel, beast and man?
Morshiel was right to call him a freak of nature. It was no wonder he didn’t tear himself limb from limb in a fit of insanity, as mixed as his blood was.
Blaise often dreamed, and his visions were a mixture of his wolf and human nature. A Native American shaman who was visiting England had once told him wolves communed with their mates in the dream world, and those visions were always true. The wolf also dreamed of the hunt and the many potential futures of his prey’s actions. Not all of
the things dreamed about the hunt would come true, but one of them would. Wisdom was required to discern which possible futures were most likely to manifest.
Men dreamed of their hopes, but mostly their fears.
That night, Blaise couldn’t decide if human or wolf was ruling him.
He dreamed he entered Elysse’s mausoleum—a cold, gray place he’d visited many times to mourn, a place that seemed as familiar to him as his inner world. He knelt by her stone tomb and tried to pray. For him, it was always trying, for he was sure the words were as meaningless as dry dust coming from a soulless throat…a soulless heart.
But he did try, fumbling the words.
He saw to his amazement that he could see directly through the lid of the thick, gray granite tomb. Elysse looked at him with eyes the color of the sky on a clear, summer day. They were like searchlights, her eyes. She flinched and uttered the familiar, dreaded words.
“You are damned,” she whispered through bloodless lips.
She turned her head on her stone pillow. He followed her gaze and saw that a twin tomb had been placed next to her, and he—Blaise—lay in this one, his cheeks hollowed out, his skin cracking to dust and his hair inexplicably gray. He was diminishing before his very eyes—decaying, shrinking…dissolving into nothingness. Horror surged up from his belly and clutched at his heart.
“No,” a woman said, her voice as rich and stirring as Elysse’s had been cold and flat. “It’s not death, but life.”
He turned and saw that Elysse no longer lay in the tomb. Isabel had taken her place. She lay nude, her skin smooth and electrically vibrant, her long, chestnut hair like living silk, her dark eyes a mystery coded into flesh. She put out her hand to him. He eagerly reached for her, pausing when he noticed her other hand extended.
Morshiel was there, kneeling next to him, his hand clasped in Isabel’s.
She took Blaise’s outstretched hand, joining the three of them, and a shock went through him.
He awoke choking, gasping for air, dying. Yes. This was dying.
Before he could comprehend his thoughts, he stumbled out of his bed and rushed into a pair of pants. He winced as he inserted his tumescent cock down the left pant leg and fastened the fly over the fullness of his testicles. It didn’t surprise him that he’d awakened erect and throbbing with need. He’d done so since Isabel entered Sanctuary. Since he’d taken her, mated with her, he always rose from sleep ready to claim her.
What confused him utterly was why the dream of Isabel beckoning both Morshiel and him would arouse him so desperately. He didn’t have the time or energy to consider that puzzle now, however. He could only think of one thing—awakening Isabel from sleep. She’d be soft and warm, and she would greet him with outstretched arms, for he was her dream, and her sleeping-self waited for him, wanted him…
He froze when he heard a sound in the outer chamber. He turned his head, listening with the acute senses of wolf and Magian combined. Even though his study was dark save for the dying fire, when he slipped through the opened door, he knew precisely where she stood.
She didn’t look up when he switched on the dim lamp on his desk. She wore a black nightgown, her alabaster shoulders naked save for the thin straps. In the periphery of his vision, he noticed her feet were bare. She must have awakened and fled her room in a hurry, heedless of robe and slippers. Her long hair half covered her face as she looked down at the pile of wedding silk. Her hands were naked. He stepped forward when he saw the tears on her cheek.
“Don’t,” he said gruffly, alarmed to see her reach out to touch the silk—her hands ungloved. He hated to see the anguish on her face when she inadvertently touched something during their frantic matings, especially since he was the one to demand she remove the protection of her gloves. He extended his hand to stop her, but too late.
She stiffened and whimpered when her naked fingers delved into the opalescent silk.
“Isabel, don’t.”
“I want to,” she said, lifting her head. Her eyes remained closed as her fingers moved in the fabric. Tears began to stream down her face. He couldn’t stand the sight. He grabbed her wrists and forced her to turn.
“What are you doing?” he asked harshly.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “You need not search the silk anymore. I can tell you where every flaw is in the fabric.”
“Bloody hell, I don’t care about the silk. It’s nothing to me.”
“You’re wrong,” she whispered. A tear slipped between her pink, trembling lips. “You have gone over the fabric so many times with your hands, searching for flaws, your essence has become grafted to it. So much sadness. So much courage. I dreamed of touching it with bare hands, and I had to come. I want to touch it again.”
Despite her pressured words, she didn’t turn toward the silk but instead pressed closer to him, stirring his senses into a frothing boil.
“Isabel—”
“I want to touch you.”
He groaned in rising misery. When he’d first taken her, he’d wanted nothing more than her touch on his bare skin. But he’d been a fool then, not understanding what it would mean to have her touch him, to know him so intimately. Still, the sweet words uttered from a sweeter mouth tempted him beyond reason. He captured her wrists in one hand and leaned down, seizing her lips in a searing kiss.
It was the first time. The first time he’d kissed her. He hadn’t allowed himself the sheer luxury before.
It was the first time he’d tangled his tongue with hers, the first time he’d permitted himself to drown in her taste.
A human being couldn’t comprehend what a kiss meant to a creature such as he. He didn’t want to stop. Ever.
Which is why he’d set the sanction upon himself.
He opened one hand along her lower spine, his fingers reaching and delving into the taut curves of satin-covered buttocks. She moaned and arched into him, the sensation making his mind go black for a moment. He pushed against her, willing her to move back with him toward the table. He grabbed for the silk roughly and brought it up around her, draping her in it. The weight of the fabric pulled on her long hair. Her head fell back, exposing her white throat. His cock leapt next to his thigh and his incisors extended.
“I had to come,” she whispered, her eyes opened into gleaming slits.
“If you had not come, I would have come to you,” he said before he kissed her again, trying to slake his monumental thirst. She shivered in his arms when he ran his lips over the column of her throat. He lifted her and the silk, the dense fabric the heavier weight of the two, and carried her before the dying fire. He knelt, laying her on the carpet. She stared up at him, cocooned in priceless silk, and held up her arms.
He knew the inevitable moment had arrived when he would touch her everywhere, feel every inch of her smooth skin beneath his lips, teeth and tongue. He longed for it, hungered for it, as he’d never longed for anything in his soulless existence.
He couldn’t stand for the moment to be marred by her look of horror if she fully absorbed his cursed essence with her sensitive fingertips, though.
He held her stare as he lifted her gown. As always, the sight of her pale, taut belly, gently curving hips and small, thrusting breasts excited him beyond measure. He lifted her arms and carefully manipulated the satin over her vulnerable hands. She watched him with wide eyes as he twisted the flimsy fabric of the gown into a slender rope.
“Put your wrists together above your head.”
“No,” she whispered.
He merely said Isabel and she raised her hands into a position that was familiar to her, even if she didn’t recall. She stared up at him, her hands clutched together loosely above her head, protecting the inner flesh of her palms and fingers. Often, when he was moving inside her, he’d tell her to open her palms so that he could see the tender, sensitive flesh. The vision never ceased to send a jolt of arousal though him.
At the moment, her gaze struck him as trusting, and yet unhappy at once.<
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“I do it for you, Isabel.”
“You’re not listening when I say I want to touch you.”
“You don’t know what you want,” he said gruffly as he bound her wrists together with the twisted fabric. She moaned when her hands were tied, arching her back and thrusting her pink nipples toward him. He knew she enjoyed being restrained, even if she protested at the moment, and that pleased him.
Everything about her pleased him.
He quickly shucked off the jeans he’d just donned and fingered the band of leather around his waist, hesitating. He glanced up and saw her stare fixed on his cock. His penis flicked upward, as if her gaze was a hot stroke along its length. For the first time in his long, long life, he removed his heartluster and the harness in order to lie with a woman.
So what if he was vulnerable during those ecstatic moments. His vulnerability was a given when it came to Isabel.
He straddled her thighs and placed his hands beneath the thick silk. He watched her face closely as he ran the exquisite fabric over her smooth skin. She moaned in pleasure.
“The royals have lost their prize,” he murmured, his gaze glued to the erotic vision of her nipples deepening in color and growing erect—such succulent, delicious fruit. He molded the silk to her hips, his hands holding her and stroking her at once. “The sheets were meant for our joining—no one else’s.”
“Yes.”
He met her heavy-lidded stare. She looked sublime to him in that moment, her skin smooth and gleaming next to the rich fabric, restrained and as helpless as he was to stop this deluge of desire.
“Ask me to touch you, Isabel. Ask me.”
“Make love to me, Blaise.”
He slid his hands beneath her ribcage and lifted her at the same moment he leaned down. She arched into him, her long, dark hair spreading against the drape of pale silk. He took her breast into his mouth and suckled the sweet morsel, his hunger exponentially strong because of his forced abstinence in tasting her flesh. Heat rushed into his groin, swelling his cock until it ached against stretched skin.