by Caris Roane
“Lily,” Adrien called to her, but not from the floor.
At first she didn’t understand.
“Lily, over here by the fireplace.”
Slowly, she shifted her gaze. There Adrien stood, another Adrien, straining in the direction of the mantel but unable to move.
Two Adriens.
“I need my weapons,” he shouted. “Step into the room, toward me. Help me. For God’s sake help me or we’ll both die.”
Shock held Lily immobile.
There were two Adriens.
Two.
How the hell was that possible, in this world or any world? Kiernan hadn’t told her about this.
“Lily!” he shouted.
The desperation in his voice broke the spell and she darted forward, positioning herself midway between the battling pair on the floor and the second Adrien struggling toward the fireplace.
The chain released him and he immediately jerked forward to the painting over the fireplace, pulled it away from the wall, then punched in a code to what proved to be a safe. But grunting sounds from the floor shifted her gaze to his other self on the floor.
The dagger flashed once more in the dim light from a nearby window.
The assailant rolled Adrien onto his back and pressed a dagger to his neck. Adrien battled to keep the sharp point from breaking skin.
She glanced in the direction of the fireplace. The second Adrien withdrew a chain, weighted at both ends, from the safe.
He blurred back to the assailant and, from behind, caught him around the neck, tightening as he pulled. The prone version of Adrien now grabbed the wrist holding the dagger, keeping the assailant’s hand immobile as the chain did its work.
Lily held her fingers to her lips and watched as life left the stranger, all three bodies locked in battle.
Adrien held both parts of himself still as he focused on finishing the job.
The room was horribly quiet except for the faint rustle of clothing as the assailant struggled to get free, a fish flailing in a net.
After what seemed like an eternity, he grew limp, but still Adrien held the chain around his neck, taking the kill to its limit, making certain of death. After what seemed like an hour, he let the body fall to the floor.
Adrien re-formed, the two beings drawing together in a swift, almost invisible rush of movement, reshaping to the self prone on the floor. Another shock to her system.
He sat up, sweat pouring from him, dripping off his forehead, soaking his shirt, the dead vampire at his feet.
It was all so horrible.
He sat there for a long moment, his arms braced around his knees, his gaze fixed straight ahead, the battle chain dangling from his left hand. She remembered seeing him in two places and tried to understand the dual parts, how they might have functioned.
She stared down at the corpse on the floor. “He’s dead.” Such a stupid thing to say.
Adrien nodded, his gaze falling to the body as well, a frown between his brows. His lips sagged at each corner.
“I don’t exactly know how to process that there were two of you and that you just killed a man. In front of me.”
His gaze shot back to hers. “You mean that I just saved your life.”
“And your own. This is monstrous, Adrien.”
His gaze hardened. “You call this monstrous? Your race is so arrogant.”
“Arrogant? We don’t move in packs and destroy entire neighborhoods of innocent families.”
“No, you build armies and destroy nations.”
She put a hand to her chest. “I don’t build armies.”
He glared at her. “And I don’t move in packs. My brothers and I police those fucking packs whenever we can. I give up my life every goddamn night hunting them down and slaughtering those of my kind that threaten the secrecy of our world. Or I did until Daniel gained control of the Council and threw all three of us in prison.”
Lily stared at him. She knew so little of his world that it shocked her to hear him speak of policing rogue vampires. She wanted to think she might have misjudged things, but the tips of his fangs showed and she shuddered.
He gained his feet, sweat dripping down his face. He once more wiped his sleeve over his forehead. “Shit.”
He moved past her, crossing to his desk. He unplugged his iPhone from the power source, tapped it a few times, and said simply, “I’ve had a security breach and I need cleanup.” He didn’t even state an address.
He pressed another button and slid the phone into the pocket of his jeans. “They’ll be here in a few seconds, flying in. Just be prepared.”
On instinct, Lily moved in his direction. Maybe because he felt her sudden anxiety, he drew close as well but maintained a slight, careful separation.
A split second later two young men arrived carrying a stretcher between them.
“That was fast,” she murmured.
“Yeah. Phones have helped. We have a much quicker response time now.”
One of them glanced at Adrien. “We’re getting the security system fixed.”
“Thank you. What the fuck happened?”
“Our whole system crashed about half an hour ago.”
“You were hacked.”
“Looks like.”
Adrien scowled as he glanced at Lily. She was pretty sure she could read his mind on this one.
“You were right,” she said.
“Then you’d better get ready to fight hard for the fortune you’re after. This nightmare has just started.”
One of the young men turned to Adrien. “Does this mean that you and your brothers are free? I mean, did Daniel release all of you?”
“No, not yet.”
“I’m glad you’re out. We’ve had a lot of problems with rogues, and some of the seedier clubs have gotten out of control. Your presence has been missed.”
Adrien nodded but said nothing more.
Offering one last bow in Adrien’s direction, the two men, with the corpse on the stretcher between them, glanced at each other, then moved swiftly into altered flight and disappeared from the apartment.
Adrien swiped at his forehead. “I’ve gotta shower again. Sorry. Then we probably should make some plans.”
Lily held her arms folded tightly over her chest. She trembled, but she didn’t want Adrien to see her this upset. She needed to toughen up if she hoped to see Josh again—and yet a man, even if he was a vampire, had just died in front of her.
With the short fighting chain dangling from his hand, Adrien crossed in front of her and headed in his long stride out of the office. She moved fast to keep up.
Once more he crossed the top of the living room. He paused to glance at the security panel by the door. Lily saw that the lights were now on, which apparently satisfied Adrien because he moved swiftly back down the long dark hall. He dipped into his bedroom, then returned with what looked like another shirt and jeans. He opened what proved to be, just as Lily had suspected, the second door to the black marble bathroom.
When he went inside, Lily stopped at the threshold. The dimensions of the room, though large, didn’t exceed the capacity of the shared chains, so she said, “I’ll be right outside.”
He nodded, his expression still grim. When he started to unbutton his jeans, she quickly closed the door. She really didn’t need to catch another glimpse of all his maleness.
She sank to the carpet next to the door, drew her knees up to her chest, and slung her arms around her legs.
Tears burned her eyes.
This was all too much.
She’d never seen a man killed before and if she hadn’t had the presence of mind to move when Adrien needed her to move, well, she’d be dead and Kiernan would probably dispose of Josh as an asset that had lost its value.
She took deep breaths and arched her neck to stare up at the tall ceiling, at least what she could see of it. Her eyes had adjusted but the hall was very dark. A distant glow from the living room’s front window provided the only illumina
tion. The Paris apartment, while beautiful, had odd angles and fairly small windows.
Kiernan had told her that once she shared the blood-chain with Adrien, she would start siphoning his natural vampire powers. She might see better in the dark, hear better, and have a sense of his emotions, possibly even gain increased physical strength. She’d also be able to bring her tracking ability online; if she focused on the weapon, over the next few days she would develop the ability to see its location anywhere on earth just by thinking about it.
She tried it out now, thinking about the extinction weapon, but nothing happened, not really, except for a small sense that she was reaching out for something by sending tendril-like thoughts outside herself. She focused once more, concentrating hard, but again felt just strange little tendrils without much effect.
She was queasy at the thought that she was this connected to one of the walking undead. Except vampires weren’t exactly the undead; that was just part of her world’s mythology. These vampires lived in all sizes of caverns, more a tribal culture than anything else. They shunned centralized organization, but it appeared the vampire Daniel was working hard to establish himself as a dictator. And wouldn’t a weapon like the one she sought be exactly what a hopeful despot needed to consolidate his power?
And every time Adrien spoke Daniel’s name, rage boiled from him, a dark, deep hatred for the man who, by all appearances, intended to enslave his world. She could hardly blame Adrien for that.
Everything was in almost pitch blackness—which reflected exactly how she felt right now. She felt the pressure of the dark around her, the proverbial rock-and-a-hard-place.
Probably more than anything, she needed to come to terms with Adrien. He was so angry. Every breath he took vibrated with rage. Of course he had reason, since he’d been chained up and tortured for a year, and his brothers were still there. Yet she sensed there was something else eating at him, something that went very deep and probably had to do with Daniel.
And Adrien was four hundred years old and Daniel five times that, figures that still boggled her mind. The vampire world was long-lived. Adrien had had centuries to stoke the fires of his hatred for a man like Daniel.
CHAPTER 3
Adrien loved his Paris shower. He’d had the head mounted high to compensate for his height, and the strong water pressure really stripped the dirt away—or in this case the sweat. He leaned back and let the warm water flow over his hair, his forehead, nose, and chin.
Beautiful.
Other sensations struck.
He’d killed yet another fellow vampire.
He was tired of killing his own kind, but he and his brothers had been serving his world for centuries doing just that. When vampires followed the wrong path and hurt other vampires or humans, he stepped in, as both Lucian and Marius did, and others they’d trained through the decades.
The problem in his culture was simple: His kind valued individual liberty above everything, which left the whole society vulnerable to despots like Daniel. Self-direction was so prized among his species that few strong, supportable laws had been instituted to protect good citizens from those who practiced evil.
There were even heresies abroad that had so perverted the essential law of their world that those who killed humans were now being elevated in rank in certain secret societies, offered medals and prized cave dwellings for taking human life.
As he rinsed the battle-sweat off his body, he turned his mind to the here-and-now. He was in Paris after having been imprisoned for a year. His thoughts turned quickly to Lucian and Marius. He had to get them out, but if he made the attempt, and Lily got hurt or died, he’d be dead.
One final rinse and he shut the water off. He could have stayed in a lot longer; the filth he’d lived with was still too sharp in his memory. But one assassin might be followed by another or several. At least his security system was back on full force.
He toweled off in brisk movements.
So who sent the assassin? A number of sects existed throughout his world, each led by a different spiritual guide. But the largest group of fanatics followed an Ancestral called Silas, a vampire of tremendous ambition, perhaps even close to Daniel’s level. Silas shared something in common with Daniel: He didn’t hesitate to kill anyone if it meant furthering his ambitions.
So, yes, he would guess Silas had initiated this attack.
He stepped into a clean pair of jeans and slid a black tee over his head. He was tugging on the sleeves at the shoulders, adjusting them, when a stomach cramp gripped him hard.
Oh, shit. He didn’t really want to do this, but now he had no choice.
“Lily,” he called out. “I’m going to need blood, dammit!”
* * *
As Adrien appeared in the doorway, Lily saw that he was trembling, all the way from his shoulders to the tips of his fingers. She’d been warned by Kiernan of the effects of blood deprivation on the vampire, and here they were in plain view.
Another tremor.
Something was wrong.
Thunder rolled over the city and suddenly a spattering of rain hit the windows.
He winced suddenly and bent over at the waist. Through the chains, she sensed his stomach knotting as though in pain. “What’s wrong?” she asked, but she already knew. Oh, dear God, how was she supposed to do what so obviously needed doing?
He rose up, breathing hard. “Time’s come, Lily. I need blood and if you can’t deliver it, I’ve got to take care of business right now. I’ve got to get someone. They kept us blood-starved.”
Thunder rumbled overhead again and a flash of lightning brightened the cloudy October sky.
He lowered his chin and held her gaze in a hard grip, his nostrils flaring. “I’m talking sex here as well. I’ve gone too long without both and it’s almost impossible in a situation like this to take blood but hold back the other. Do you understand?”
He took a couple of steps toward her, and she took two steps back. Her heart pounded in her chest. His gaze fell to her throat; fangs appeared.
The wall of closets hit her back. The Eiffel Tower winked through the rain now hitting the windows. She tried to tell him no, but the words wouldn’t leave her mouth.
“What will it be? I’ll call someone, but you’ll have to watch.”
“I hate this.”
“Ditto.”
He trembled now and his color looked really bad. His eyes had a wild look.
She almost told him to use his phone right now, to call a donor, but she couldn’t. She’d desired him from the first, maybe even from the first time she’d seen a photo of him. And she was so lonely, so grief-stricken, that some sick parted of her wanted this and wanted it now.
He must have taken her hesitation as a yes, or maybe he couldn’t help himself, but the next moment he moved so fast she hardly saw him. She cried out as he caught her around the waist. His mouth covered hers as his tongue penetrated her deep. She could feel him hard against her belly.
Was she really doing this? Really letting a vampire take her blood and her body?
She hated him, hated his kind for taking her family from her, and hated herself for wanting him right now.
He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed. He was shaking head-to-foot, and the chains told her just how out of control he was. He laid her out on her back. “I can still call someone, but I don’t want to. I want you, Lily, and I want you now.” His arms, planted on either side of her, trembled.
But in that moment, maybe because even in his overwrought state he’d given her a choice, a wave of desire crashed over her, something that had been building since she’d first seen him in the cavern, in the vision before he’d been tortured, looking like a proud stallion, facing up to the pain to come.
Her breasts ached and she felt so swollen and needy between her legs that she let out a harsh cry. “I’m here,” she all but shouted.
Lightning flashed from the small windows on either side of the bed and thunder rolled as he landed o
n top of her. She had a brief glimpse of fangs as another flash lit the room.
She turned, exposing her neck, and he used a hand to pin her head so that she couldn’t move. He struck quickly, puncturing her vein, a brief slice of pain that disappeared the moment he began to suck in quick, heavy, starved pulls.
She could feel his desperation but the more he took, the more her body grew lax, melting into the down-filled silk. She wanted her clothes off since her body had lit on fire, burning deep.
She hadn’t had sex in all this time, not since her family disappeared from her life. And sex was all that she wanted right now, the relief of it, the physical pounding.
Fierce sex, even with a vampire.
* * *
Adrien took fire down his throat. He rarely drank from humans, but on the rare occasion he did, it had never been like this—as though each drop carried the source of all life.
He wanted more, so much more. He wanted to drink her down tonight, tomorrow night, and every night after that. He wanted the flavor of her blood on his tongue when he woke up in the evening and the last thing in the early-morning hours when he went to bed.
His blood-starvation had made his mind a cauldron of disjointed thoughts, of profound need.
He heard her cries and moans and didn’t care if he was hurting her. The hungry shifts of her legs rubbed his cock, stroking him, helping him to know that all he needed would soon follow.
He ached into his groin, a gathering of twelve months of frustration and despair. He knew that what was about to happen, especially with his blood-need satisfied, might just shake the foundation of the earth.
At last, he slowed his drinking and began to secrete the potion that would heal the fang-wounds in minutes. The same potion also carried a chemical that speeded up red cell production to replenish the supply. He’d be taking more from this human in the coming hours, the least he deserved on behalf of his kind for the wreckage her kind spewed over his world.
As he drew back, he saw her in the glow of his vision. Her pupils were dilated and her lips dark and swollen. Good. She was sexed up and ready, because what was about to come wouldn’t be a gentle coupling.