And Sera had caught fire, for goodness’ sake. Et puis, merde! Des had been right; her daughter hadn’t been safe. All through the trip to the hotel, she’d tried hard to quell the rising panic inside her. Something had tickled her brain, twisted its way through her gut to clutch at her heart—the certainty that Sera lay in danger.
Of course she’d be in danger—Rafe Harcourt was in the room, having brought the phoenix to life. Bad. The girl wouldn’t hold on for much longer; she could see it in the eyes where the flames were starting to subside. She took a few steps toward Sera. She’d have to take care of Rafe some other time. Priority right now: to free her daughter from the clutches of her base nature.
Sera held two creatures by the throat. Judging by the pile of dust near the wall, she’d venture they were vampyres. The coward had brought reinforcements with him. How like him.
He stood in front of the burning creature, one arm raised, while his stance said he was ready to jump.
Into the fire? Adri blinked. Why would he do that? The flames would consume him.
And they’d consume Sera, too, if she didn’t do anything.
With strength pulled from Lord knew where, she charged into the room and pushed Rafe aside.
“Set her free!” he cried, his voice pleading.
Wait a second. Pleading? She risked a glance at him. Contrition etched his features taut, and helplessness dawned in his eyes. What on earth...?
“What do you have to do with this?” she asked.
“It’s more important that you save her,” he countered.
He reached into his jacket and, in the blink of an eye, both she and Des had closed in on him. A vampyre cornered would never cower in his shoes, but Rafe did when Des closed a big hand on the leather sleeve. She’d swear alarm zinged through his gaze.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Des uttered in a menacing tone.
“I only want to help,” Rafe replied. “I have something that can kill them in my pocket.”
Without releasing him, Des searched the jacket lining with his free hand. Without a word, he handed her the wood stake.
A possession of vampyre lords, the few such weapons had long ago been spelled by White Witches—lords could thus decimate their own kind should they feel justice was needed. Without it, they couldn’t kill others like them.
She’d heard Rafe had risen to the lofty position in the top tier of The Vampyre Federation some time ago. Was that why he’d come after Sera? Because, now, he could?
“Mom,” a single croak resounded on the crackle and hiss of a spurt of fire.
“Let them go, Séraphine,” he pleaded.
What was Rafe up to? He rallied minions to catch her and then begged her to save herself? Those questions would have to wait, because now, she had to save her daughter. And yes, too—work with the enemy, if that’s what it took.
“You know I cannot command that stake. Only you can,” she started, already at Sera’s side.
She had no choice but to trust that he’d do the right thing and kill them after she’d pulled them out.
Without another thought, she lunged into the flames. Heat wrapped itself around her, singed her skin. But nothing on her burned. Up close, the sight that greeted her churned her insides. The vampyres had been reduced to carbonized flesh, their clothes, skin, and hair all burnt to cinders. Grabbing both their necks, she pulled and threw them out of the fire.
They landed with a thud on the floor, and she barely had time to blink before Rafe jumped onto them and drove the stake into their hearts. Dust exploded all around, and in front of her, Sera’s blaze went out. The girl reeled, before she fell. Adri barely had time to grab her under her armpits before she hit her head against the coffee table.
Not one fiber of clothing on the two of them had seared. How could that be possible, when the inferno had decimated the vampyres? What was that bond between them, they who hadn’t even known each other before one and a quarter century earlier?
“Mom,” Sera moaned.
“I’m here, trésor. Shhh. Everything will be fine.”
“Rafe...”
“Is leaving, and he won’t come back again.” She turned a hateful glare onto the vampyre, who still stood with the piles of dust at his feet.
Adri noticed the masses of black slime on the carpet, their stench of decay rising along the dark vapors evaporating from the disgusting goop.
“How dare you?” she cried out. “You created soul stealers to do your dirty work? To harm the one you profess to love? You are nothing but a despicable monster.”
“I never wanted to hurt her.”
“Yeah, right.” Des grabbed Rafe by the shoulders and hauled him across the room. The big body smashed into a mirror on the wall and crumpled onto the floor, taking with it a crystal vase and the demi-console propped there.
Something was definitely amiss here. A vampyre would never allow himself to be caught unawares, and no creature, except weres on nights they shifted, could wield enough strength to bodily lift an undead. Who the hell was Desmond Roxburgh?
More surprising even was Rafe getting up, and offering no resistance when Des stepped in his direction again.
“Stop,” she commanded. “Don’t hurt him.”
Des glared at her. “He deserves it after what he’s done.”
“True, but I want to hear what he’s been doing here.”
“I can make him talk.”
She didn’t pause, didn’t even blink. “Then do it.”
Des took a step toward Rafe, who stepped back.
Who on earth could scare a vampyre?
“I’m sorry,” Rafe said as he glanced in their direction. “It should never have come to this.”
“What—”
With that, he disappeared.
Stunned, Adri looked up at Des. The startling conclusion she’d just come to echoed off his features.
He rushed to her side, and knelt on the carpet. “You saw the pendant, too.”
She gasped. No! This couldn’t be what she thought. Sera would stand no chance, then... “He cannot have become an overlord.”
Reached just one step short of the ultimate, Supreme Ruler position inside the Federation, head of worldwide Vampyre Authority. As an overlord, he could bid for the top spot at any time. Third spot as a vampyre lord had been bad enough, but now?
He snorted. “You know as well as I do that the pendant only belongs to the overlord, that the one who died must’ve willed it to his successor. Those leather ties merge into the overlord’s neck muscle. How else could he have gotten it?”
“So he commands a territory now? Which one?” The questions tumbled inside her mind, and she didn’t stop to ponder who she spoke to. Worry was too prominent on her brain.
“That’s what I intend to find out.”
“But, how? Who are you really? And how come you know so much?”
“It doesn’t matter who I am,” he said softly. “You let him go. Why?”
She looked down, refusing to give him an answer.
“He’s her maker, isn’t he?”
Too tired to fight, or keep up pretenses any longer, she merely nodded. “He hasn’t released her yet.” A snort escaped her. “Not that I see how he’ll ever release her. He turned her so she could be his. She dreams of him, you know. She’s kept that a secret, but I’ve heard her uttering his name when she is asleep. Especially recently.”
Why now, Rafe Harcourt? Thoughts of worry muddled her brain.
In her arms, Sera stirred. Good, the girl was waking up. Hopefully, the change wouldn’t have depleted her too much, and she could recover. Adri forced herself to tear her gaze from Des to peer into her daughter’s face.
Her heart accelerated, the certainty something was amiss powering her pulse. Ominous threads wove their way into her consciousness, and she could hear her heartbeat in a pound against her temple.
Hers, and someone else’s.
Des’ heartbeat.
Horror clutched her as she ri
sked another glance at her daughter, who had now awoken...as a vampyre. The lust for blood filled her smoky grey eyes to a dark, crimson shade. Such a hungry creature would lunge for anything that could feed its craving, and right now, that someone would be Des.
He hadn’t seen the thirst in Sera’s eyes. Not yet. So he was totally unprepared when the girl pounced onto him with desperate strength that belied her weakened state. The vampyre was awake—everything else fell onto the wayside.
They toppled into a tangle on the floor, a feral growl she’d often heard in darkened Victorian streets in London’s East End filling the air with its chilling resonance. How could she ever have thought she’d hear this coming from her own daughter one day? Sera had never experienced the craving like today, had never burned with her phoenix powers as she had just earlier.
She had to save Des, keep Sera away from him. Adri jumped to her feet, before she grabbed the long red ponytail and pulled back. Des winced when the sharp talons ripped out of his shoulders.
“Go!” She wrestled with the ferocious monster that had emerged from her sweet little girl. She wouldn’t be able to hold her and help him at the same time, so he had to move.
Des lifted his head, and caught her eyes with his. Then, without a word, he disappeared.
What? Where did he go? No one other than vampyre overlords and soul stealers could dematerialize like smoke and vanish. He couldn’t be a soul stealer—much too alive for that. How about an overlord? She hadn’t seen any pendant, though that could be hidden under his shirt. So then, how had she not felt anything specific about him when they shook hands earlier? No creature she knew of could erect a firewall against her mental prodding.
The questions rolled and tumbled, and a hiss, like that of a cat prancing for a fight, brought her back to the room.
Sera eyed her with those still-crimson irises, the blood lust having completely taken over. In another minute, or less, she would jump out of the door and go slake her thirst from the first human who would cross her path.
Adri couldn’t have that happening. Time for her to fight her daughter, to put all feelings aside and think of the greater good.
The fury came at her with her talons; she deflected the lunging body with one swipe of her arm and a stiletto-heel kick into the shins. The seam of her dress ripped in the process, but she paid that no mind as Sera lost her balance and fell. The side of her head again hit the coffee table, but this time the center of it. Glass shattered and the solid ebony wood even crumbled under the force of the fall from the superhuman inert mass.
Tentacles of regret and dismay wrapped around Adri’s heart as she contemplated what she’d done to her daughter. She’d had no other choice, though, and prayed the girl wouldn’t remember any of this episode.
She stepped through the glass and picked up the limp body, to carry her, half-dragging, onto a clean rug in front of the doorway to one bedroom. There, she sat on her knees, pulled the girl’s head onto her lap, and used a shard of glass to slit her left wrist open. Blood oozed from the cut, which she then pressed to Sera’s lips.
The trickle of the dark liquid into her mouth made Sera open her eyes. Adri averted her gaze from the red irises. She couldn’t bear to see this, what her beautiful princess had been reduced to.
The sucking at her wrist gradually decreased in intensity, and when she next glanced at the girl, the eyes had returned to their usual grey shade.
Thank goodness.
Sera’s eyelids slowly closed, and her head grew heavy in her mother’s lap. Adri drew the limp body close to her, and as tears rolled from her eyes, slowly rocked the girl like she had done so many times in the past, when Sera had been growing up. There’d been a time when she had refused to sleep without being cuddled by her mother. Of course, she’d been a little girl then, all of six years old.
And after more than a hundred years, the love Adri had felt at the time had merely grown, snowballed until it became an ever-rising tide that threatened to engulf her every time she looked at her daughter and contemplated the distance between them. Distance that Rafe, in all his selfishness, had created.
Yet, tonight, he’d shown her a different side of him. Could he really care for Sera, Séraphine, as he always called her? Then why had he been here with three vampyres and Lord knew how many soul stealers? Creatures he must’ve brought to life himself, because he’d killed them.
Which led her to the only thing that mattered at the moment—Sera wasn’t safe. She wouldn’t be until they returned to Shadow Bridge, within the protection of the town’s invisible walls and their very own castle. The sooner they got there, the better.
Glancing at the sleeping form, she sighed. How would she do this? She might be a warrior but she wasn’t that strong to carry an adult girl from the penthouse suite all the way down to the garage where her car—
Et merde! She had come here in Des’ car. Hers was still parked at the Met. She’d need help. There was only one person who could come to her rescue now. Someone who knew the truth about her and Sera, who wouldn’t ask questions.
She sighed. Loathe as she was to call him, she had no other choice. He’d done his best to make her self-sufficient, and she’d never hear the end of it if she was forced to call onto his help.
Sera mattered, though, more than the disappointment she would herald in him. Adri took a deep breath.
“Ares?” she called out.
As simple as calling out his name, she could summon him. Indeed, he heeded her call, and materialized in the wrecked living room. Standing tall and imposing, black designer jeans sheathing his long legs and a tight T-shirt outlining the rippling definition of his sculpted pecs and rock-hard abs, he could pass for a playboy European football player. People were always amazed at his wholesome yet dark beauty, the pulsing magnetism from him a lure to all women, and gay men, within a range of a mile. On Olympus, everyone cowered under his particular brand of strength and power.
Everyone but her. As a child, she hadn’t feared approaching him, and this gutsy move had sealed their bond for eternity.
Still, he didn’t tolerate stupidity, which she’d displayed with her daughter so far, it seemed. She’d hear her lecture before the night was over.
“What’s the matter, Adrasteia? You really had to pull me from the most rocking party at Château Marmont for this?” He glanced around the room, and whistled softly. “Though you might have a point. What happened?”
Adri opened her mouth to answer him, but her lower lip trembled, and a sob tore through instead.
“What is it? Speak!”
She glanced up at him when he crouched next to her, one hand on Sera’s head. “It happened.”
“What happened?”
“The blood lust came today. I couldn’t stop it in time.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Tell me you didn’t say that.”
She bit her lip and shook her head.
“How?”
She recounted what she knew, obliterating no detail.
“Who the hell is this Des fellow? What does he want with you?”
Outrage filled his words, and she heard the powerful love behind them. Ares might be the god of war feared by millions, but to her, he’d always be the big brother who took her under his wing.
“He’s one of the good guys,” she stated.
He snorted. “You’ve got a crush on him.”
She smacked him on a bulging bicep. “Get out of here!”
He jumped to his feet. “Sure. You just have to ask—”
“I didn’t mean get out of this room, you idiot.” She tugged on his trouser leg to keep him in place. “Listen to me. We need to get back to Shadow Bridge, and for that, I require your help.”
He sighed. “Oh, sure. Now I’m Muscle Man, here to do your bidding.”
He could be so insufferable when he wanted to. Adri stood and kneed him in the gonads.
“What you go and do that for?” he howled.
“It’s not about me, but about he
r. Don’t you remember what you said—”
They’d never spoken of that promise....
Ares drew to his full height of seven feet and frowned. “Of course I remember. I don’t say anything I don’t mean. I gave you my word I’d keep your secret, and help out with her.”
Adri blinked to ward off the tears. He was the only one who knew of Sera’s origins, because he’d been with her on that fateful night when a flaming bundle had suddenly appeared in her arms inside the stables of her château in the south of France.
“Then help me now, brother. Take us back to Shadow Bridge.”
He nodded. “I’ll find a car.”
He’d taken one step toward the door when a knock resounded. With a lightning-quick move, he reached Sera’s side and scooped her into his arms. After moving into the bedroom, he motioned to Adri from the doorway to attend the door.
Heart hammering in her chest, she trudged to the suite’s entrance and pulled the panel open. Vampyres or soul stealers would not advertise their presence and knock; they’d barge through or appear out of thin air. So whoever had come calling had to be mortal. Which didn’t mean they couldn’t be dangerous.
Through the slat of the opened doorway, she eyed the bell boy who stood on the threshold. He held a heavy garment on one arm, and nodded when she widened the opening enough to be seen.
“Good evening, Miss Dionysios. Someone left this for you at reception.” He handed over the thick coat and a set of car keys. “The gentleman said you’d know who sent this. He said to inform you that the vehicle is in your usual parking space.”
She reached for the velvet mass and the keys to her SLR.
Des. It had to be him, for who else had known she’d left her coat and her car behind?
He’d escaped unscathed, then. But how? And again, who was he, in the end?
More pressing matters to attend to. Now that she had a means to get out of New York, she only had to get her daughter into the car and on the way back to their house. Ares wouldn’t have to use more than his muscles, after all.
She nodded her thanks at the bell boy and shut the door.
Ares came out of the bedroom alone.
“Where—”
“She’s sleeping.”
Inescapable (Eternelles: The Beginning, Book 1) Page 5