Raven dropped his hand but his eyes squinted. There was something unsettling about this person, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
“What are you doing here?” Abi asked in a low voice, trying to avoid looking him in the eye.
“The same could be said of you,” he replied. Gina rounded the corner to come stand at his side. “I’m here to see my wife,” he added with almost malicious glee. He seemed to delight in how that comment hit home.
“Wife?” she repeated as she stared at Gina incredulously.
Gina nodded, although reluctantly. Hunter went on. “I followed her all the way to Europe. It only took one substitute to realize that I always had the real thing.” He draped his arm across Gina’s shoulders. “What you do for love, huh?”
Abigail gulped and looked away. “Congratulations,” she managed through a tightly constricted throat. She couldn’t even look Raven in the eye. “I’ve got to go. I suddenly don’t feel very well.”
Raven didn’t understand, but he followed her as she raced out of the club. With one final look back to where Gina and Hunter stood he realized something very interesting.
The man had no trouble at all touching the unusual sister with brightly colored hair.
Chapter Twelve: Henri
“I can’t believe you told Abi we were married.”
Hunter wore a lopsided grin as he watched Gina behind the bar. She was taking out her aggression on the counter, on stains that were not even there.
“Why not?” he asked, trying not to chuckle. “It’s not like I haven’t asked often enough.”
“Hunter.”
He held up a hand. “Don’t get your panties in a twist. I told her that to keep her safe.”
“Safe? How is that supposed to keep her safe?”
“Did you see her face? There’s no way she will come back here if she thinks she’s going to run into the happy newlyweds.” He toasted her with his bottle of water, but Gina remained unconvinced – for one reason above any other.
And that reason was standing in Abigail’s living room at that very moment.
Raven Crowe went through the photos in frames that sat on a densely filled bookcase. There he saw a much younger Abigail next to a much younger Gina – before her punk hairdo and fuck off persona. He picked up the frame to examine it closer.
“Well at least she can’t complain that anyone mistake the two of us,” Abi said as she came up from behind.
“Twins?” Raven asked.
“No,” she replied as she replaced the photo. “She’s older. But we were always mistaken as twins when we were growing up. Probably because our mother insisted we dress alike, wear our hair the same. We really weren’t encouraged to develop personalities of our own. She’s certainly corrected that problem.”
Raven watched her go over to the couch and flop down. “Why’s she here?”
Abi shrugged. “Who knows?” Then, with effort, she muttered, “Maybe a honeymoon.”
Raven went over to armchair next to the sofa. “Tell me about Hunter.”
She closed her eyes. “I’d rather not.”
Raven had to laugh. “The journalist doesn’t answer questions, I take it?”
She peered at him through one partially opened eye. “Something like that.”
He simply waited. She held out for about a minute and a half. “Hunter was Gina’s high school sweetheart. They dated the entire four years. They were the ‘perfect’ couple.”
“And you hated them,” He surmised.
“I hated them.” She sat up with a sigh. “We looked alike but we are fundamentally different. I always felt like I was running to catch up. She barely had to study and she’d get good grades. Yet I always managed to get distracted and ‘fail to live up to my potential’ – which was code for being like her. But I wasn’t her. I was me.”
He waited and he watched. She hopped up and began to pace.
“Senior year she got accepted into a program where she’d spend a semester in Europe. Just one more feather in her cap. And of course she took it. She’d have been an idiot not to. And Gina’s no idiot. So she went, but not after a big fight with Hunter, who wanted to get engaged before she left so he’d know for sure she’d come back to him.”
“An insecure boyfriend. What’s a jealous sister to do?”
Abi let out a long sigh. “What, indeed.”
Raven watched as she headed over to her mini bar, pouring herself a stiff drink. “It took a month, but by the time we finally slept together he was as mad at her as I was. It fueled our affair until a month before graduation. That’s when our father died and Gina came home. Let’s just say it was a pretty interesting funeral.”
Raven nodded. He could only imagine.
“She went back to Europe and I never thought I’d see her again. Neither did Hunter, which seemed to matter more to him than to me.” The hurt in her voice was palpable. Raven knew in an instant that she still loved him, even if she couldn’t admit it to herself. She simply shrugged. “Ultimately Hunter left for college and I guess I kind of forgot about it over time.”
Raven got up to join her where she stood. He took the glass from her hands. “Listen. Take it from the undead guy. Anything you bury eventually comes back up again.”
She nodded. He was right. She had forgotten nothing – especially what it felt like to look into Hunter’s blue eyes and know he loved someone else. She closed her eyes and embraced herself. It still hurt.
How could she still love him after all these years... after all they’d done?
Raven touched her face. Her eyes opened. His eyes were dark and intense. If he was thinking of another, she certainly couldn’t tell. And she liked that. Suddenly she liked that a lot.
When he pulled her into his arms, she didn’t resist. His lip curled into a smile. “I never would have imagined you as a boyfriend-stealing seductress,” he said, humor laced in his voice.
She smiled back. “Never judge a book by its cover,” she advised. “I only look sweet.”
His head bent towards hers. His mouth opened and covered her lips, his tongue like fire as it penetrated her mouth and slowly blended with her own.
She groaned as she felt herself dissolve against him. It was wrong, it was all wrong... but it wasn’t like that had ever stopped her before. When he lifted away she was breathless. “You shouldn’t sell yourself short. You taste pretty sweet as well.”
She laughed. “So you say. But you haven’t really tasted me yet.”
His eyes darkened. He didn’t know what she meant, but her words had made his already hardening cock jump. With a glint in her eye she took his hand and led him toward her bedroom.
The room was yellow – like an explosion of marigolds. Her hair stood out in the bright room, dark copper tresses that toppled over her bare creamy shoulders as she took off her shirt. She took him by both hands and pulled him toward the canopied bed.
They fell against the soft cotton fabric, cool against their exposed flesh. She pushed him over on his back. He loved how her hair cascaded over her shoulders as she bent to kiss him. His hand wound into the dark copper curtain and pulled her up on top of him. He toppled headlong into her clouded eyes as he watched her full mouth descend on his own.
Their kiss was long and sweet as they explored and savored each other’s mouths. The braver they got, the more they groaned against each other. They clutched one another tightly, as if they suddenly couldn’t get close enough.
He felt the exquisite longing he’d experienced since he first laid eyes on her rush over every inch of his hard body. He had never needed a woman more, that he remembered. It rendered him helpless under her artful tongue and tender kisses that lit on his mouth, his face and over to his ear.
When her moist, warm mouth opened over his own sensitive neck he felt his cock jump in response. Her cool teeth brushed against the satiny skin kept alive by stolen blood rushing just under the surface. He wanted to feel her pierce his skin and drink from him, even
though he knew that was the very last thing he ever could ever allow her to do.
That would make her just like him, a cursed soul meant to walk this world with an insatiable appetite.
But that also meant she’d be with him forever; and for the first time in a long time, that idea didn’t seem so bad.
Before he could ask her to taste of him, her mouth moved lower over his ripped chest and sensitive stomach. His hand automatically wound in her hair as she deftly slid the zipper of his pants down with her teeth. His hard cock jumped from the restrictive material and bumped right against her sweet mouth.
They both moaned in response, and she was quick to engulf him with her mouth, as hungry for him as he had been for her.
He threw his head back in open-mouthed ecstasy as she slowly worked him in and out of her warm mouth, savoring the taste of his cock on her tongue that slid around him like a snake. He glanced down to watch himself fucking her face and his heart nearly stopped when her gaze met his. There were few things sexier than a woman who truly loved sucking a man’s dick, and her intent prowess was taking him right to the brink.
“I want to fuck you,” he muttered, then the more rarely uttered, “please.”
Just as she crawled up his body he thought his heart would thunder right out of his chest. But before she could straddle his painful erection they both realized the pounding that they heard was a knocking on her bedroom’s balcony doors.
He clutched at her as she pulled away. “No,” he growled.
But the knocking was incessant. She wrapped herself in a sheet and headed for the door. Raven was incoherent with anger and frustration when he recognized the tall man in the white suit that stood just outside the door. He didn’t even bother to cover himself. “What the fuck are you doing here, Constantine?”
Constantine took note of the state Raven was in, but it didn’t even seem to amuse him like it would have normally. That scared Raven more than the blunt “Lillith needs you,” Constantine uttered.
***
A half an hour later the three of them stood in Lillith’s club, fully clothed and sex the farthest thing from their minds.
Raven stroked Lillith’s hair as she clung to him and cried. She hadn’t stopped from the moment he walked in the door and she had run to him with unapologetic abandon. “What happened?” he finally asked her.
“Henri,” she sobbed against his soaked shirt. Raven searched his memory to finally recall the bartender he met the very first night he’d come to the club. “I left him in control of the club to spend a rare night at my own home. I had been so disturbed by what has been happening at Sebastian’s coven.”
Both Abi and Raven nodded. Abi, especially, could empathize given she’d almost been raped by the vile creature in a darkened club very much like this one.
Constantine remained tight-lipped and grim – which was very uncharacteristic for him. “So what happened?” Raven repeated to the hysterical redhead at his side.
Lillith said nothing as she led them all to the back room that, under normal circumstances, would have been full of ograsmic revelers fucking in a hedonistic orgy. Instead the candles were burned out and the beds were all empty except for one.
The big king-sized mattress up on a platform reserved normally for Lillith, the vampire queen of her lair, was dripping with blood and the remains of a male body that had been torn apart almost from the inside out.
“When I came in today I found him like this,” she managed – unable to look at what remained of Henri without breaking down into uncontrollable sobs again. Abi came to her and took her into her arms, then led her out of the room.
Constantine and Raven stared down on the bed and both of them knew two things. The Creature who killed Sonja was responsible, and that Henri had not been its intended target.
The Creature had wanted Lillith. Henri had, more than likely, simply gotten in its way. Now he served as a very disturbing calling card that clearly indicated the Creature could and most likely would get to Lillith if it wanted.
And with a tightening of his gut, Raven knew why it would want to.
The Creature was after the women that Raven had desired. Abi... Sonja... now Lillith – there was definitely a pattern none of them could deny.
He glanced over at Abi who stroked Lillith’s hair and tried to comfort the vampire who suddenly realized her own tenuous mortality.
Despite how close they’d come, he knew he could never be with Abi. Even if he turned her, even if she begged, she would never be safe from this mysterious Creature. She could never return to the covens or the vampires who inhabited them.
Sebastian had been right. Raven had to send her away. It was for her own good.
Chapter Thirteen: Raven
No one, either vampire or human, said much as they escorted Lillith back to her private home, an old Southern plantation secluded by the long arms of sad, ancient trees in marshy country outside of the city.
Constantine kept Abigail company as Raven saw the distraught vampire mistress to her private quarters. Her grounds were protected by dedicated servants, all strong men who hovered somewhere between mortal and immortal.
Not that it mattered. The Creature didn’t seem to care what type of life it took to get what it wanted, and though nobody spoke the words aloud, everyone already knew the next person on its agenda to exterminate.
That was why, though she begged him to stay, Raven told Lillith that it would be best if he go.
He’d seriously begun to think that was the solution for everything – to leave them all and draw the Creature away from them.
As Raven caressed Lillith’s soft ivory features while she drifted off to sleep, that idea had more and more merit.
He nodded to the strong, muscular man with long blond hair who stood watch by her chamber door and then made his way to the parlor where Constantine and Abi waited.
“She’s asleep,” he told them. “Let’s go.”
They followed him without question, something neither of them thought they would do. But the game had definitely changed. None present could erase the visual of a young man torn apart on a blood-soaked mattress.
The Creature was determined to show them their immortality was a joke.
Abi still felt its claws upon her skin, its hot breath against her face. Had she been barely spared the same fate as Henri?
She shuddered in spite of herself, something both vampires noticed. Constantine and Raven shared a knowing look. Though certainly not their first natural instinct, both felt the sudden need to protect her.
But as she looked into Raven’s eyes, he knew that a simple goodbye would not suffice. Well-reasoned logic why she should stay far away from him and from the covens certainly hadn’t convinced her. Her draw to him and to his very lifestyle – such that it was – was entirely too strong. He had not turned her, but she was as much a night walker as any of them. It was in her spirit, if not yet in her blood.
This was his one last chance to set her free, to appeal to that side of her that was human. He couldn’t afford to blow it.
As they reached her block he hung back, wanting to make their split as public as possible.
If the Creature was watching him and scoping out his companions for prey – something he had begun to suspect from the eerie sensations he felt within the limits of the city – Raven was ready to put on the act of his life.
As expected, Abi quickly realized he no longer followed and turned to face him. “Raven?”
Constantine also turned, and recognized the look on Raven’s face immediately. This was not going to be pretty, and he didn’t want to be a party to any of it.
Yet somehow he knew he had to – if Raven was going to crush Abi’s heart he suddenly felt the need to pick up the pieces. It was the least he could do after introducing her to this life in the first place. Such compassion was a foreign thing to him – and part of him immediately wanted to run far, far away.
Yet he stayed rooted to the spot anyway.
The hard look on his face was unwavering. “It occurs to me that all of this unpleasantness began around the time you started coming to the coven,” he announced. “And now I think I know why.” He advanced on her until he was merely a breath away. “It’s because of you.”
Her eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”
He laughed. “You with your human desire and your petty little sexual games. You are a disease that is turning us all into monsters. A poison that ultimately ends in our death. You really think that your arrival to the coven was a coincidence? That you simply wanted ‘research’?” He sneered down his nose at her. “You are inferior in every way. Therefore you must destroy us for your own pathetic survival.”
She fought the tears. Why was he being so cruel after he had held her so tenderly? “Raven.”
“Don’t waste your tears on me,” he warned. “I’m not human. I do not care.”
She squared her chin. “I don’t believe that.”
“No?” he asked as he pulled her to him roughly. His eyes darkened to near black as his mouth crushed down on hers in an angry, possessive kiss. Just as she started to succumb to his raw passion, she felt the skin of is lips erode away to paper, and his teeth elongated to a skeletal state while his bony fingers dug into her soft, supple skin. Abi stifled a scream as she attempted to pull away, but he held her in a vice grip.
“You see what you make me?” he growled through hundreds of years old skin stretched across long dead bones of his face. “I’m a monster! Do you really want to fuck a monster?”
The remains of his mouth descended towards hers again but she wrenched away. Constantine watched helplessly from the sidelines. As much as he glorified in the god-like power of turning humans into immortals, he never felt the need to show the uglier, scarier side of his nature to a helpless human. He wanted their adoration, their lust and their obedience, but not their terror, even when he fed.
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