Diadem of Blood and Bones

by Ripley Proserpina

  Sylvain lifted her, and she twined her arms around his neck, holding as tight as she could. Hudson, Marcus and Valen left. She heard their feet tread across the wood floor and shuffle over the carpet before they descended downstairs. How incredible to feel everything and hear everything. Before, she would have been self-conscious. She would have made sure the others left before she let herself cling to Sylvain, but she knew they’d given them the privacy to have this moment.

  She and Sylvain needed this.

  “You died.” He drew back and stared down at her accusingly. “You left me.”

  Never again. “I didn’t want to. I wanted to save you.” It had been her only thought in those horrible moments when she’d crossed the dirty warehouse floor to Asher. The belief that they would continue with their lives had kept her placing one foot in front of the other as she’d burned alive.

  Sylvain dragged in a breath. “I can’t live without you, Briar. I lose everyone I love. Everyone.”

  “You won’t lose me,” she promised.

  “I did,” he argued. The bed hit the back of her knees, and she realized he’d been walking. She settled back, and when he would have remained standing, she tugged his hands until he lay over her, propped on his elbows. Gaze on his hands, he played with her hair. “I didn’t think I was capable of hurting that much again.”

  Oh God. “Sylvain. I’m so sorry.” She kissed him desperately; his tongue traced the outline of his lips as he dragged in one barely controlled breath after another. “I’m so sorry.” Each apology came with a kiss until he responded again.

  Soon, his lips chased hers. His stubble dragged across her skin, but she liked it. The burn reminded her this was real.

  She’d gotten a second chance, and she’d never take it for granted.

  Sylvain’s boots hit the ground with a thud, and then he ground into her, pelvis rocking against hers. Crossing her legs behind his back, she lifted herself into his motion, chasing each retreat.

  He left her mouth, trailing down her neck to kiss the scar of her burn. “No more burning,” he whispered against her skin.

  Briar had to chuckle as heat pooled between her thighs. “Not that kind.”

  Sylvain pulled back to study her, grinning when he caught her meaning. “You’re burning?” His hips thrust forward with his question.

  Gasping, she nodded quickly. Cool fingers drifted beneath her shirt and goosebumps blasted over her body. “Yes!”

  He chuckled before tearing her shirt. The fabric ripped, but Briar couldn’t bring herself to care because then he ripped his own shirt from his body and they were skin to skin.

  Sylvain kissed her, tongue dueling with hers. He filled her senses so she drowned in his taste. Home. He was home.

  Her feelings threatened to overwhelm her—she adored him. Wanted him. Yearned to be closer to him.

  Briar ripped at the button on his pants, fingers fumbling with the zipper. Sylvain swept her hands out of the way. Urgency gripped them both until finally he rested, naked, between her legs.

  Time suddenly seemed to slow. Pressing her head into her pillow, she tried to see more of him. Fine dark hair sprinkled his chest, and she touched it. Sylvain closed his eyes, shifting to sit up.

  Now she could see him properly. She covered his chest with her hands and raked them down to his abs. His muscles rippled, twitching beneath her hands. Her thumbs smoothed over the line of hair that began above his belly button to trail down his waist.

  Briar could feel his eyes on hers as she studied his body. “You have scars.” Lines of silver crisscrossed his abdomen. She even made out some on the top of his thighs. Dropping her hands there, she smoothed her palms up and down his legs. “How?”

  Sylvain glanced at his body, eyebrows drawn low. “I don’t remember all of them,” he admitted, touching three parallel lines with each finger.

  “This one was a bear?” she asked, lifting one hand to his eyebrow.

  From deep in the house, someone barked a laugh, and Sylvain’s grimaced.

  “What?” she asked. “You said it was a bear. Or was it a hatchet?” The laugh came again, joined by another. “It is a little disconcerting to know everyone can hear us.” She mouthed the words.

  “They’ll watch TV,” he said as he grasped her hands and sure enough, the TV came on. Sylvain placed his hands on either side of her head before shifting to cover her again. Slowly, he trailed one hand down her side to her hip.

  Briar lifted her knees to open herself more fully to him, sighing in relief when she felt him there—hard and heavy.

  Sylvain moaned, throwing his head back and shutting his eyes. “Briar.”

  She lifted her hips, wiggling a little until she felt his tip breach her entrance. He was so smooth; he glided inside her but stopped himself.

  A tremor ran through his body.

  “Sylvain.” She was begging, but he didn’t move.

  “I don’t want to be too rough.”

  Her heart gave a thud inside her chest. This man. He would try to be everything to her, but all she wanted was for him to be himself. “Sylvain,” she said and gripped his ass hard. “I need you.” She thrust her hips toward him, skin slapping against his pelvis, and he groaned. “I want you just how you are.”

  Her words gave him the permission he was waiting for. He drew back all the way and slammed inside her again. Briar arched back when he did so she could meet each of his thrusts with one of her own. His fingers tangled with hers while one arm went around her waist, lifting her to hold her close as he curled around her body.

  Briar held on as tight as she could, rocking her hips as much as she could.

  Sylvain had said she wouldn’t burn anymore, but he was wrong. He had set her on fire, and it burned hotter and brighter than she could have imagined.

  Bite.

  The thought came out of nowhere and made her lose her rhythm. Sylvain felt it because he slowed. She buried her face against his chest and breathed in his scent. Bitebitebite.

  “I want—” Inside her, Sylvain jumped, and she clenched around him. She flared and sparked as he continued to press inside her, his hard length pulsing gently.

  He drew back, and she risked glancing up. When their eyes met, he smiled, slow and cocky. “Bite, Briar.” He eased his head to the side, exposing his throat.

  She surged upward just as he pistoned inside her, and when her teeth sliced him, his blood coating her tongue and filling her mouth, she came around him.

  Sylvain cried out before his teeth were at her neck and he was biting deep.

  It was too much and not enough. She felt everything, tasted everything—every fear, every hope, every dream Sylvain had.

  She saw it all.

  She drank him down as his mouth pulled at her throat and her eyes closed, a warm lethargy blanketing her.

  His tongue was slick against her neck as he cleaned her. “Just like I dreamed,” he whispered as he pulled her into his arms.

  Against his chest Briar licked her lips and smiled. “Better.”

  Sylvain

  Sylvain held the being he loved more than life in his arms. Her blood sang along his veins, filling him with satisfaction.

  Breathing deep, he took in Briar’s apple blossom scent. It was everywhere now. In the room, emanating from her skin. His chest tightened and his heart beat. Once and then again. And again.

  “Sylvain.” Briar touched his chest, palm flat against his chest. “Holy cow, Sylvain! Your heart!”

  “I have to move.” He didn’t want to. With everything he was, he wanted to stay with Briar in his arms, but her blood had energized him to the point of mania. Leaping from the bed, he pulled on his clothes.

  “You’re blurring.” Briar sat up, blanket clutched to her chest.

  She was right. He moved so fast his hand was a smudge in the air. It took all his concentration and control to slow himself. His chest tightened, not with anxiety, but with urgency. He had to move. He had to go.

  “I love you,” he
said, forcing himself to stop at the door. “I’m sorry.” But Briar wasn’t where he expected her to be. She’d dressed in the time it took him to get to the door.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  The rush of her blood reached a peak, and he was unable to reply. Instead, he spun around and raced down the stairs. “Stop her,” he managed to grind out before he exploded out the door.

  The sun was starting to set, but he was too fast to have to worry about the daylight exposing him. Sylvain ran through the streets of Boston, his only goal to unload the immense amount of energy Briar’s blood had given him.

  The wind shifted suddenly, carrying with it the sickly sweet scent of rot and decay. It smacked him in the face. Crawlers.

  Without giving it another thought, he ran toward the scent. Behind him, he heard someone chasing him, and he growled.

  “It’s me,” Valen said breathlessly.

  Knowing it was Valen only spurred Sylvain faster. On and on he ran and soon the scent was everywhere. It was darker now, the sun low and air cool, but the crawlers’ scent was overwhelming.

  Briar’s blood made his vision sharper. Every shadow on every leaf was clear. Even the trail of slime left by the crawlers’ bodies, which should have been less visible in the waning light, glimmered like a road map.

  There.

  A warning hiss rose from the ground where the crawlers oozed over each other. They’d spotted him, but rather than retreat, they writhed on the ground, sending curious glances his way.

  Sylvain sucked in a breath and immediately regretted it. There were so many of them, and this close, it was like standing in a compost heap on a humid day.

  Valen finally arrived, and as he came to a stop, he gagged. Nose against his shoulder, he pinned his bright blue stare on Sylvain. “Just go in and start hacking?” he asked.

  The run had done what Sylvain hoped and his head had cleared somewhat. There were a score of crawlers, but he was more than capable of taking them on. “Yeah,” he told Valen and lurched toward the mass slithering toward them.

  “Wait!”

  The voice had him whipping around and catching the figure in his arms. “What are you doing?” he demanded of Briar.

  Her gaze wasn’t on him. It was on the crawlers whose whispers slowly reached his ears. “Queen queen. The queen. The queen.”

  The wretched pile of bodies seemed to pick up speed, and Sylvain dragged Briar behind him.

  Holding up one hand, Briar whispered, “Stop.”

  The crawlers undulated on the ground, inching closer to Briar before retreating as if they wanted to disobey, but couldn’t. They hissed and groaned, but one word was clear to Sylvain. Queen.

  “These are the worst of our kind,” Valen said, “if such a thing is possible. The vilest humans given immortality often become this. Eternally rotting corpses.”

  They heard his brother and many of them cried out. “Not true!” one said. “I was innocent. This was not what I wished.”

  “Forever lying,” Valen went on. “Refusing to admit that the poison from their human life followed them into their immortal one. This is merely a reflection of who they truly are.”

  “I thought it was a trick of fate,” she said. “One could easily become a crawler.”

  “It is,” Hudson said.

  Marcus followed, sweeping a hand down his jacket. “The lowest and most despicable of humankind could become a vampire like Asher or a crawler like these things. But no human who has lived as best they can will become a crawler.”

  “I never would have become this?” Briar asked.

  “You think we don’t hear you?” one of the crawlers screamed. “How can you speak of our misfortune as if you understand it? As if there was a reason for it. I lived a blameless life.”

  Briar strode forward before Sylvain caught her arm. “He lies,” Sylvain told her.

  “I know,” she answered. Her voice had become dreamlike, and her gaze, distant. When she spoke again, it was with an unfamiliar voice. “You do lie,” she said to the creature. Briar changed before Sylvain’s eyes. She stood straighter, her shoulders back and chin held high. “I see what you were.”

  The crawler shrank back, attempting to hide among its brethren.

  “Murderer.” Briar’s voice deepened. “Torturer.” With each word she stepped closer to the crawlers. Sylvain held her around her waist. Or attempted to. Her strength astounded him, and he stumbled, struggling to keep his footing.

  “Valen,” he yelled, and his brother added his strength to Sylvain’s.

  But it wasn’t enough to hold Briar in place.

  “You deserve an eternity of pain,” she whispered, and then she disappeared. One second Sylvain held her and the next she was gone, only to emerge among the squealing, broken crawlers. She lifted one by its neck, twisted it with nothing more than a flick of her wrist before dropping it to the ground and yanking its head from its body.

  “Briar!” Sylvain and his brothers leapt into the fray, but in the milliseconds it took for them to travel the distance between them and the crawlers, Briar had become a blur of destruction. “Watch their bite,” he cried as he crushed one’s skull beneath his boot.

  “I. Know.” Valen punctuated his reply with each head he yanked from a body.

  Hudson and Marcus moved silently, but efficiently.

  And Briar.

  Sylvain couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was beauty in motion. A spinning, golden slip of obliteration. She didn’t stop until each crawler was dead.

  When the last head fell from her hand, she finally paused. “Oh,” she said on a breath as she surveyed the wreckage. Sylvain approached her carefully. Her slight body trembled, and she wrapped her arms around herself as she faced him. “Sylvain?”

  They’d been wrong. Earlier, he and his brothers had said Briar didn’t suffer from bloodlust. Sylvain stepped over a body that was slowly disintegrating to ash. Clearly, they’d spoken too soon.

  “I don’t know why—” she said in a small voice.

  “Yes, you do,” Hudson replied and Sylvain growled.

  “Careful, Hud.”

  “Briar. You do know why you attacked, don’t you?” He ignored Sylvain and reached for her. “You saw inside their heads. Saw what they were.”

  “What they hid,” she whispered, pointing to something on the ground Sylvain had missed. The crawlers hadn’t amassed to protect each other. They’d gathered to protect their meal.

  The wind blew the ashes of the crawlers off the lifeless human forms. Sylvain had overestimated their numbers, because he’d mistaken the victims for crawlers.

  Now he counted them. Twelve. Thirteen. Thirteen humans who’d met a horrible, painful end.

  Briar stumbled, and Sylvain caught her hand even as Hudson held her up. “I couldn’t stop.”

  “Did you want to?” Hudson asked.

  “Hudson. I swear to God,” Sylvain warned. Whatever his brother was trying to do, this wasn’t the way to do it. Couldn’t he see Briar teetering on the edge? Why was he pushing her? All of them had been out of control when they turned.

  “I don’t know,” Briar replied. Her voice shook, but she swallowed hard and kept going. “I wanted revenge, for what they did to you. For what I saw in their heads. For what they’d done to these poor people. I think I could have stopped.” She stared at a human, gaze drifting to the bite marks along his body. “I think I didn’t want to.”

  “You did nothing wrong,” Sylvain assured her.

  Valen picked his way across the ground to face her. “Little one. My brother is right. Would you judge us for doing the same?”

  “No!” Offended that he would criticize himself, Briar pinned Valen with a glare.

  “We don’t judge you either,” Marcus said. “But I want to know what happened.”

  “What happened?” Sylvain asked and scoffed. “What happened is that she’s a total badass and took care of business.”

  Marcus rolled his eyes, ignoring him. “How did you k
now about their pasts? I thought you said you couldn’t read minds.”

  “I can’t,” she argued.

  “You knew what they’d done, Briar,” Hudson said gently. “You knew their human lives.”

  Releasing her hand from Sylvain’s to scrub at her face, Briar didn’t answer.

  “Briar.” When she didn’t answer again, Sylvain turned her and took her into his arms. “It’ll be okay.” He’d never seen a vampire move as fast as Briar had—never seen one morph so quickly from stillness to whirlwind—but he knew they would handle anything that came their way.

  “How do you know?” she asked as she leaned her head on his chest.

  “Because it has to be,” he answered. “We’re together. That’s all that matters.”

  Briar

  So—Briar could read the minds of crawlers and then murder them. Okay. She burrowed a little harder against Sylvain who only held her tighter.

  “I read their minds.” She said it aloud to make herself believe it. “I can read minds.”

  “Can you read mine?” Sylvain asked, his voice rumbling low and velvety.

  Concentrating, she waited for the flashes of images and impressions that had assailed her when she’d come upon the crawlers. But it didn’t happen. She shut her eyes, blocking out everything but Sylvain’s steady heartbeat against her ear. “Sylvain, your heart is beating really fast.”

  “I know,” he answered, paused, and then went on, “but I wasn’t thinking about my heart. It must be your blood. It happened to Valen, too.”

  “Do you feel all right?” she asked.

  “Stop trying to change the subject.” Sylvain growled, but tempered his words with a kiss on the top of her head.

  “Sorry.” She hadn’t consciously been trying to pull them off track.

  “It’s okay.” He rocked her from side to side. “So?”

  Closing her eyes, she tried again, but the only thing she sensed was the sound of the wind in the trees and the growing chill in the air. “Nothing.”

  “I think we need to leave,” Marcus suddenly said. “We’re standing at a mass grave. And though we’re what—fifty miles outside Boston? I don’t think we should stick around.”