His jaw tightened, and for a minute I didn't think he was going to answer. With an annoyed grimace, he admitted, "Looking for the ring."
"Ah! The ring." I nibbled on my lower lip for a moment or two. "Um. What ring?"
"What ring? Melissande persuaded you to help her without mentioning the ring of Asmodeus?" He shook his head, a disgusted look on his face. "Foolish woman."
"She's not foolish, she's concerned. There's a difference. And yes, she mentioned a ring, but only briefly. I'm sure she would have gone into more detail if we'd had time. This ring—I assume, since you're looking for it, that it has some sort of power against Asmodeus?"
His hands clenched. "Yes. It channels his power. Without it, he is crippled, bound to his prison, unable to free himself."
"That tells me why he should be looking for it, but not who you… oh." Just as the words left my mouth I remembered what Melissande had told me: Adrian the Betrayer was bound to the demon lord Asmodeus. Which meant if his master wanted the ring but was too weak to go hunting for it himself, his tame vampire would be the likeliest person to send on a retrieval mission. "Asmodeus asked you to look for it?"
"Yes."
The word positively dripped ice cubes.
I mused for a moment over the fact that his eyes had gone a flat, dulled ice blue. "OK, got that, but what does this ring have to do with anyone else? Why did you say Melissande was foolish not to have discussed it with me? Wait—does this ring have power that can be used against Asmodeus as well as by him?"
"Yes."
The atmosphere surrounding Adrian was so cold, I wouldn't have been surprised to see a polar bear strolling by.
"Ah, gotcha. So if Melissande gets ahold of this ring, she can either trot up to the A-man and offer him a trade—the ring for her nephew—or use it against him and force him to free the kid?"
"To do either would be to sign both her and Damian's death warrants." His eyelids dropped to half-mast as he gave me a long look. "The ring is a conduit to great power. Whoever wields it has within his hands the ability to destroy the lord Asmodeus. It would be fatal for one unlearned in the ways of the dark powers to try to use the power against him. Melissande has neither the strength nor the ability to battle Asmodeus."
I pursed my lips, warmth flooding my belly with the way Adrian's gaze pounced on the movement. "I take it you didn't find this ring at the castle?"
"No. You did not happen to see it during your search of Dante's desk?"
"A ring?" I thought back to my scant few minutes in the wonderful library, dwelling for a moment on the warded book that yielded the notes and shell earring. Did Adrian know I had searched other places in the room than just the desk? He had recognized that the vase was warded, but perhaps he hadn't had time to look over the entire library and realize that a less obvious object had been warded as well. "No, I didn't see a ring in his desk. How did you know that vase was warded?"
One auburn eyebrow rose in question.
"The vase in the library, the one you tested me with to see if I could recognize the ward. How did you know it was warded? Can you draw them, too?"
He shrugged. "Anyone can draw a ward, but it takes a skilled Charmer or one learned in ward lore to unmake them."
"So you can see the ward as well?" I pressed, a growing suspicion making it important to know whether he had searched Christian's books. I slowly slid my right hand from my sleeve, along my hip to the back pocket on my pants, watching Adrian from the corner of my eye. He didn't seem to notice the movement.
"Not see them, but feel them. When I was near the vase, I felt that it was warded."
My fingers closed around the thin circle of the earring. "What… uh… what does this Asmodeus ring look like? Something big and garish? Gold Tolkien-ish band? Red-hot to the touch and leaving scorch marks on whoever touches it?"
He gave me a curious glance. I smiled and looked as innocent as I could.
"Your smile is lopsided," he said, apropos of nothing.
"I know." I kept my lips curved despite the almost overwhelming desire to grind my teeth at his comment. "Does the ring have spiders carved on it or something ghoulish like that? Does it leech blood? Is it connected in any way with a giant eye floating above a black tower?"
Adrian looked as if he wanted to roll his eyes, but managed to give me a weary look instead. "Nothing so dramatic. And you thought I'd been watching too much Buffy."
"Hey!" I said, about to protest the fact that he'd been in my mind again without my permission.
"The ring is about two centimeters in width, and consists of a thin circle of horn bound in gold."
"Horn?" I asked, my stomach doing a lurch as I ran my finger around the approximately two centimeter-wide circular earring in my pocket, the one I had assumed was made of shell. "What sort of horn?"
He looked away, once again scanning our surroundings. "Unicorn."
I laughed, the sound dying a cruel death on my lips as I realized he wasn't cracking a smile at his joke. "You're serious, aren't you? Unicorn?"
"Yes, I'm serious. Have you seen such a ring?"
I shook my head, the fingers of my right hand running around the object in my pocket, searching for a break that would indicate that it was an earring as I originally thought, and not a ring so powerful it could destroy a demon lord.
There was no break.
Adrian must have picked up on the sudden panic that filled me, because his eyes (medium blue) narrowed as they turned back to me. "Are you sure you have not seen it?"
I cleared my suddenly tight throat and eased my hand from my pocket. I couldn't know for certain just what the object I'd picked up was. I'd have to examine it fully at the first opportunity before making a determination about whether it was a ring, or just a facsimile. "Sure I'm sure." When he stared at me a little longer, I added in all honesty, "If I'd seen a unicorn-horn ring, believe me, I'd have said something."
"Mmm." He watched me carefully for a few more seconds before returning to his scan of the immediate area.
"What… uh… what would this ring do to a person? It's not evil, is it? It wouldn't take them over and make them do bad things?"
"The ring itself is powerless—it is merely a conduit to the unbound power of Asmodeus. It is entirely up to the person wielding the ring whether or not the power is used for good or evil."
I slumped in relief against the wall and wondered just what I'd gotten myself into. In the span of slightly more than twenty-four hours I'd slept soundly on a vampire, fed him my blood, all but offered myself as his nooky queen for the rest of eternity, and discovered my back pocket was quite likely to be home to a demon lord's limitless power.
Some days it's just not worth the effort to stay sane.
Chapter Seven
"This is where you live?" I looked around the room. The word squalid immediately came to mind, but I squelched it as coming from a too middle-class background, and tried instead to see it as an unbiased visitor might. The drapes that hung in front of a grime-encrusted window didn't look the exact color of vomited Pepto Bismol, but they weren't off by much. A rickety desk to my left had one leg about two inches shorter than the others, while the veneer at the corners of the desk peeled upward. The bed next to the table had a distinct sag in the middle. Two flabby gray pillows and a mottled brown and green bedspread topped it. Behind me a wardrobe missing one door appeared to have recently been the domicile of several families of incontinent mice. A cracked mirror above a rust-stained sink completed the room's accoutrements. "I'm sorry, I gave it my best shot, but I'm going to have to go with my initial impression, and that's god-awful."
"I don't live here," Adrian said, setting a beat-up black leather satchel on an obscenely overstuffed chair that was apparently upholstered with some sort of shiny bok choy. The satchel immediately slid to the ground. "I simply stay in this hotel when I'm in Cologne."
I crossed my arms over my chest, covertly rubbing my arms to warm them up. Evidently the Hotel Geh Shlafen didn't inc
lude a heat source in their rooms. "Which brings up the question of exactly why we're in Cologne. I thought you said we're going to England."
"We are." He unbuckled the straps on the satchel and dug out a small shaving kit. "But I prefer not to travel during the daylight hours, so we'll stay here until this evening."
"Here?" I looked around the room, ending at the saggy bed. He couldn't be thinking what I was thinking he was thinking. Could he? "Together? Us?"
"Here, together, us. You may sleep on the bed. I will use the chair." He pulled a straight-edge razor from the shaving kit and laid it on the sink.
"You're shaving?" I asked, intrigued as he lathered up a small shaving brush. "Wait a minute! You can't shave, you're a vampire! Everyone knows vamps don't have beards!"
"Everyone is wrong," he said carefully as he finished applying the lather to his face, the scrape of the razor along his left cheek sending odd little thrills down my back. I've always had a thing for men shaving—it was such an intimate act, one that hinted that Adrian was as comfortable with me as I was with him. Which, considering that we'd only known each other a day, gave credence to my growing belief that I was his own personal soul-saver. I shoved that thought aside and turned my attention to less confusing issues.
"Hey! You have clothes in here!" I pulled a black cotton pullover from the satchel. "What's the deal with that? I thought vamps could, you know, materialize their own clothes!"
He glared at me in the broken mirror as the straightedge swept along his upper lip.
"First you have to shave, then you can't magic up your own clothes, and just what's this?" I shook a familiar object at him. "A toothbrush! Who ever heard of a vampire needing a toothbrush? You don't eat, for Pete's sake! And I have never, ever read a book where a vampire needed a toothbrush. Obviously, you need to get with the times, Adrian. How old are you, anyway?"
"Four hundred and eighty-one, not that my age has anything to do with me needing to shave or brush my teeth. I assure you that no Dark One I know can materialize clothing out of nothing. We are not magical sprites, Nell. We're damned, tortured men, children of the red abyss, nightwalkers bound to eternal torment, but that doesn't mean we have poor hygiene. We shave, we brush our teeth, and we bathe regularly. Does that answer all your questions?"
"Wow." I sat down on the bed, sliding backward into the dip, ignoring his rant to dwell on the weight of his age. "Four hundred and eighty-one. That means you were born in… uh—"
"1524."
"Wow," I said again, having a hard time wrapping my mind around that idea. Oh, I didn't have difficulty believing he was immortal, but the things he must have seen! The events he had lived through! The knowledge he had gained over four centuries! "You're a historian's dream come true! It makes me drool just thinking about what's in your head."
He washed off the last of the shaving soap, carefully drying his things before tucking them away, his eyes the color of a bright blue topaz. "You do not want to know what's in my head, Nell. Not even if you were my Beloved could you cope with the things I have done, the monster I have become. I was not named the Betrayer without reason."
"You know, you can't say something like that to me and not expect me to rise to the challenge." I suited words to action and got off the bed, stopping directly in front of him. "I'm still not convinced that I'm not this Beloved person, but I can assure you that I'm not going to push you into a relationship."
"That's good, because you're not—"
"I will, however, prove to you that you're not the scary monster you think you are. Oh, I know, you've done bad things, but come on, Adrian—you're cursed, seriously cursed! I might not be an expert on the subject of demon lords, but I'm willing to bet that bearing one of their curses doesn't mean you go around doing random acts of kindness. I also know that I wouldn't find you as nummy as I do if you were truly an evil person, so you can just stop frowning. You're not evil. You're not a monster. Don't forget I had a peek into your mind."
"You fainted after you did," he answered, his lips compressed into a grim line. It just made me want to grab him by the ears and kiss him until his eyes turned black.
"That was just the shock of finding out your soul had gone AWOL. It had nothing to do with who you are or what you've done. Want me to prove it?" I took a step forward until I was almost touching him. "Brace yourself, because Mr. Mind is about to have company. Now, let's see, what did I do before? Oh, yeah."
I stood very still, calmed my scattered thoughts, and held an image of him in my mind.
Nothing happened.
"What am I doing wrong?" I asked, opening my eyes. Adrian was standing before me, his arms crossed over his chest again. I gave the squealing, girlish part of my brain a few seconds to admire the way his silk shirt caressed his biceps, and how his rolled-up sleeves exposed the corded strength of his forearms. "When I did this before, whammo! I was in Adrian Central. But now it's not working."
"I do not choose to allow you in my mind," he said, his voice utterly dispassionate.
"Can you do that to your Beloved?" I was a bit taken aback by his refusal to allow me in, growing annoyed when I thought of the times he'd strolled into my head without my permission.
"If you were my true Beloved, no, I couldn't keep you out. There is nothing that can be kept secret between a Dark One and his Beloved, but as you are not…"
I put my hand over his heart and immediately sank into his consciousness, the howling emptiness within him filling me. I gasped with pain as it overwhelmed me, absorbing everything within me and leaving nothing but rage and agony. I fought to breathe, fought to keep my heart beating despite the ageless despair that consumed me.
Reality swirled away from me, time and place blending into an impenetrable miasma. Just as I began to fall into the heart of it, Adrian was there, holding me close, buffering the darkness so it didn't absorb me, his presence the lifeline I needed to survive. I clung tightly to him, struggling to control the emotions that were pouring into me, until slowly, atom by atom, I took the blackness and pain and torment, and held it trembling within me. I looked deep into Adrian's crystal-clear eyes, and knew what I wanted. I wanted his pain to be gone. I wanted his soul to fill the void that ached within him. I wanted the darkness to turn to light.
You've suffered long enough, Adrian. The words formed in my mind as his mouth descended upon mine, his heat fueling me as I transformed his darkness. For the pain, I gave him succor. For the emptiness, I gave him purpose. And for the black despair, I fed him hope.
You cannot do this. It is impossible. This is not happening. Denial was strong in him, but desire was stronger.
His lips burned on mine, his tongue a brand that scorched its way across my lips as it urged me to allow him into my mouth. I shivered with the sudden flood of erotic images that filled my mind, parting my lips to let him sink within.
I want you, Nell. I need you. My body cries out for you. But I cannot have you.
Why? I asked, running my hands down the planes of his back, tugging until I pulled the tail of his silk shirt free from his pants. I'm willing. I'm more than willing, I'm just as desperate as you are. Why can't we do this?
He groaned into my mouth as I sculpted my hands along the hot skin of his back. I felt the struggle within him even before he managed to tear his mouth from mine.
"We cannot do this because I am doomed. We have no future together, Nell. We cannot be together. I will not damn another innocent soul because of my sins."
I grabbed both edges of the front of his shirt and ripped it open. I think he was as surprised at my action as I was, but I didn't let that stop me from yanking off the rest of the shirt. "Mmmrowr!" I purred, throwing myself on him.
"No! I will not let you do this!" he snarled… in between hot, fevered kisses that came close to melting the fillings in my teeth.
He spun us around so that I was caught between a cold, rough wall, and a hot, hard vampire. I sucked his lip into my mouth and used both hands to clutch his hair. "I'm
your Beloved, dammit! You're going to let me save your soul, and like it!"
"You'll do nothing of the kind," he growled, whipping my sweater off over my head and staring with sizzling hot eyes at the swell of my breasts above my bra.
"Kiss me," I demanded, tugging his hair.
"No!" His lips possessed mine, his body hard and aggressive, slamming me back into the wall, his groin pressed suggestively against mine. I wiggled against him, mimicking the sinuous movement of his tongue as it bullied mine.
"Feed from me," I begged when his lips parted from mine only to trail kisses of fire down my neck to my chest. Almost five hundred years of experience weren't for naught—with a quick move he had my bra off and flung across the room, the steaming heat of his mouth making me stand on tippy-toe with delirium.
"I won't," he growled just before he took my breast in his mouth, the sharp sting of his canines as they scraped tender flesh soothed by the gentle caress of his tongue. I arched against him, aware but uncaring that he was tugging off my jeans with one hand, his other hand tangled in my hair, my mouth busy as I tasted the salt of his skin. I kissed a path up his neck to the spot behind his ear that I had been dying to nibble on, my hands skimming down the velvet steel of his arms.
"Need me," I moaned as he yanked my underwear off. I swirled my tongue around the curve of his ear, rubbing my now naked body against him, my senses overloading with the feel of his bare chest on mine, the soft hair teasing my breasts even as the rough texture of his jeans abraded more sensitive flesh. He dropped to his knees with a groan, his mouth suddenly possessing me in a way that left me gasping for air, my legs boneless as his tongue flicked and teased and tasted until I clutched his head to me and gave in to the passion he fired.
"Never!" He lifted my still trembling body and followed me down to the bed after shucking his jeans and boots. His body covered mine, all male strength and heat, but it was the sharp hunger within him that had me arching against him, my hands exploring the wonderful territory of his back and adorable behind.
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