“Petros didn’t.”
“I love him like a brother, but sometimes the man can be an idiot. He’s made more than his share of fledglings, I’m afraid,” Lucien said with a sigh. “Although, I am glad he turned Christina, for she has been a good friend. Over the years, she has tended the herds for us.”
“Not very well, though,” Khamsin reminded.
Lucien frowned. “Apparently not. I am inclined to think her research has been more important than her doctoring.”
“Research?”
Lucien got up from the bed and walked to the window. He leaned his forearm against the casing and pressed his throbbing head to his wrist as he looked out over the mountain valley.
“There really is a plague, you know,” he said.
“Aye, I’ve seen it.”
He looked around. “Where?”
“Near the coast of Mexico but that was a few years ago,” she replied.
“How came you to be there?”
“I told you I had stowed away on one of the supply ships?” she asked and at his nod continued. “It was a schooner and they found me eventually. At first they were angry but then they set me to work.”
“Did they take you?” he asked.
Khamsin shook her head. “They thought I was a boy. I looked like one back then.”
“So the supply ship dropped anchor off the coast of Mexico and that is where you saw the plague victims?”
“Only one, but the memory of what I saw still haunts me.”
“I imagine that was not a pretty sight.”
Khamsin shuddered. “It was ghastly. The poor woman had boils all over her. She was howling from the pain and though it seemed cruel, I was glad when they shot her. There was nothing that could be done for her.”
“No, there is no cure, but that is something Christina is working on. She helped to find the serum that is now widely used in the herds. Many humans died from the plague before that preventative was found.”
“And the serum is as important to your kind as it is to us,” she said.
“Without it, the human race would die out and our supply of sustenance would be limited to animal blood,” he remarked with a frown. “That is not a palatable notion. We would survive but the quality of our unlife would be greatly diminished.”
“I have never been inoculated,” Khamsin said. “Contracting the disease is something I fear more than Rev…”
“More than Revenants,” he finished for her.
Khamsin bit her lip. “Aye.”
“At any rate,” he said, returning his gaze to the world beyond the keep. “You don’t have to worry about contracting the disease or having a Revenant turn you, wench. You are too valuable.”
“Valuable in what way?” she asked.
“Marcus took a sample of your blood before you were put in with the herd. Remember?”
“Yes.”
“You have the antibody within you that is used to make the serum. Your blood is more valuable than the most precious of metals. You are one of the special ones.”
His words hit Khamsin like a slap to the face and her lips parted in surprise. She was safe! Not even the villainous Stavros Constantine would allow her to be harmed.
“Oh, he’d harm you, wench,” Lucien said. “He likes sex rougher than Alexa Dimitros and that is saying something.”
“Alexa?” she questioned.
“Petros’ woman,” he said with a grin. “You have nothing to worry about from her.”
“But you wouldn’t allow Petros to take me,” she said.
Lucien lowered his arm and turned to face her. He leaned back against the wall and crossed his thickly muscled arms over his naked chest.
“No, you belong to me.”
Khamsin shuddered. “So you can pretend I am your dead wife?”
“You bear a passing resemblance to my wife, but not enough to affect me as it has Petros,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “When I take you, I won’t pretend it is Magdalena.”
Khamsin’s heart thudded painfully in her chest. “I have said I do not…”
“It isn’t a matter of if I will take you,” he interrupted her. “It is a matter of when I will do so, wench. The decision is mine, not yours.”
He pushed away from the wall and came slowly toward the bed.
Khamsin’s eyes widened and she twisted her head toward the door, looking for an escape route.
“Before your feet could hit the floor, I’d be on you, wench,” he said and smiled nastily as she jerked her head around to stare wide-eyed at him. He stopped, his gaze locked with hers.
“Please, I…” she said, her voice trembling.
“You’re not a virgin,” he stated, inhaling deeply. “I would know.”
“No, but…”
“I’ll not hurt you,” he said, taking a step closer. “I will not degrade or humiliate you.” He took another step toward the bed.
Khamsin felt trapped—like a cornered animal and she was breathing quickly, shallowly, feeling lightheaded as she did.
He took the last step and as he did, his thighs bumped the mattress and Khamsin whimpered.
“When I decide it is time, I will woo you, I will not rape you.”
She trembled as he climbed into the bed with her and reached for her. Despite her fear, she allowed him to cradle her in his arms and lay there quivering as he ran his hand over her hair, calming her as though she was a child.
“I will even allow you free will, wench,” he said. “And you will come to me of that free will.”
“Never,” she said, tears choking her throat.
Lucien smiled. “We’ll see.”
Chapter Five
Prince Stavros Constantine kicked the dead woman out of his bed and turned over. She had not satisfied him and her shrieks had given him a headache. She hadn’t tasted good either, and he snatched up the sheet to wipe at his lips, scrubbing off the offending odor of her inferior blood.
It had been the same for months now and he was restless, his cock as bored as he was by the procession of meager human talent that had been stretched out upon his bed. Not a one of them had given him pleasure and he feared there were none in his present stock that could.
“Lucien has the best herd,” he snarled as he flounced the covers. “He has the best female flesh at his beck and call!”
It was always Lucien, he thought, as he stared up at the ceiling. Lucien had the best from amongst the remaining humans on the continent. Lucien had the best keep—living in luxury at Modartha—while he, Stavros, had to make do with the miserable castle in Duaric. Lucien had tastier animals and quality breeding stock.
“And I’ve got sickly animals and bitches whose wombs are as barren as the cliffs of Mount Duáilce,” Stavros complained.
It had always been so and Stavros knew why. Though Sibylline had turned him—on a whim it now seemed—she had chosen Lucien as the heir apparent for when she was finally ready to Go To Ground. She had made Stavros a Prince of the Blood but Stavros felt he, himself, was nothing more than a lackey, a stand-in when she was in the mind to be fucked.
And that hadn’t happened in many a year.
“She’s screwing that bastard Gideon. I know she is!” he growled and the thought of the Irish imbecile Sibylline had turned into another Prince of the Blood infuriated Stavros to the point of screaming. It was bad enough an outsider had been given such a privilege but an Irishman?
And what of the Spaniard? He, too, was a Prince of the Blood. That was even worse than having the Mick as a prince.
Flinging aside the covers, Stavros got out of bed, stepping over the woman lying crumpled on the floor. He spat on her—his spittle hitting her squarely between her glazed, staring eyes—then padded over to the window. Putting his hands on the casement, he bellowed his rage, hearing it echo back to him through the canyons.
“I hate you, Lucien Korvina!” he shouted and a dozen curses reverberated through the dark night. “If you hadn’t hurt our queen, she woul
d not have seen fit to make those other two bastards!”
Quietly, the door to Stavros’ room opened and his Lord of Security—Petros’ counterpart—slipped hesitantly inside. He stood trembling at the door, ready to flee if his prince came at him.
“What news of Korvina?” Stavros demanded, not bothering to turn around.
“He received a shipment of humans last eve,” Lord Anchises Banos replied. “One has the antibody.”
“Well, of course!” Stavros seethed. “Only the best for sweet Lucien, the turd!”
Anchises took a few steps into the room, stopping as his prince turned to glower at him. He held up a hand. “There is something else, my Prince.”
“Really? Has he learned to walk on water?” Stavros mimicked.
“Do you remember the one called Magdalena, Your Grace?”
Stavros growled a warning.
“Queen Sibylline spoke of her to you,” Anchises was quick to say.
The growl deepened.
“She was Prince Lucien’s wife in the before unlife,” Anchises reminded Stavros.
The slashing black brows of Stavros Constantine drew together. “His mortal wife? What of her?”
“They say this special one could be her double.”
Interest sparked in Stavros’ midnight dark eyes and he came away from the window. “And has he claimed her?”
“She lies in his bed even as we speak, Your Grace,” Anchises replied.
“He has claimed her?” Stavros wanted clarified. Many a woman had lain in Lucien Korvina’s bed, but except for Sibylline, he had slipped no cock into them.
“I am told he has.”
Stavros drew in a breath. “He has chosen a human as his consort,” he whispered.
“One as lovely as his dead wife,” Anchises asserted.
Pacing the confines of his bedroom, Stavros was lost deep in thought. He pulled himself out of it long enough to order Anchises to get rid of the dead woman and to bring him a fresh one.
“One at least halfway pretty this time and doesn’t smell like shit!”
Anchises put his hands up. “There aren’t that many to choose from, Your Grace. None of them are pretty.”
“Well, find one that doesn’t stink!” Stavros screamed. “Can you at least do that?”
Anchises assured his prince he would see to it and bowed as he walked backward, not trusting his prince not to physically attack him. When he bumped into the door, he flinched but kept bowing as he shut the door behind his departure.
“And make her brush her damned teeth!” Stavros yelled.
Continuing his pacing, Stavros dark eyes swung back and forth as plans tripped through his brain. Not only would it be a coup to possess a special one, it would help to replenish a diminishing herd. His healers could extract the antibody from her blood and make more serum for there was precious little of it left in the apothecary. He could send his thralls further out into the world in search of better breeding material—if any was left that Lucien and the stupid Gideon O’Rourke had not culled. The herd could be built up!
“And I can have beautiful women beneath me once again!” Stavros mumbled as he put a hand to his throbbing cock, massaging the hard length of it.
All such thoughts were pleasant to contemplate and it helped to soothe the raging sexual energy rippling through Stavros’ body. But it was the thought of taking something precious away from Lucien that increased the pressure and the speed of the hand with which he fondled his staff.
“To have her stretched out beneath me, her cunt dripping as I ram into her,” Stavros said, stopping to work furiously at his hard on. “To thrust into her ass until she bleeds and fill her to bursting with my cum!”
He lifted his hand to his face and spit into his palm then took hold of himself once more.
“To jam myself into her mouth and make her swallow my cock, gagging her as I shove it down her pretty little throat,” Stavros said, sighing with the pleasure such a notion created.
“No matter how pretty she is, I will mutilate that lovely face,” he swore and his hand was a blur as he jacked his flesh. “I will send it back to him piece by bloody piece!”
He dwelled on carving the woman’s flesh, of whittling away a pert nose, an eyelid adorned with long, spiky lashes, a curvaceous, pouting lip.
“I’ll send him her clit,” he whispered, closing his eyes to the building release burning at his groin. “I’ll slice off her breasts and make a sandwich of them for him!”
Panting as the burning, itching sensation between his legs built to a roaring inferno, he pictured Lucien bent over in agony, keening as he held the peeled scalp of his beloved in his hands.
“Yes,” Stavros cried, pulling harder upon his staff. “Yes!”
Mindless of the thralls who had crept into the room to remove the dead woman, Stavros shot his wad upward, his eyes widening as the copious white fluid spurted high into the air. He laughed, turning around in a semicircle and spraying his cum in a wide arc.
“Fuck you, Lucien Korvina!” he exclaimed. “And fuck your woman!”
Hurrying away with the body sagging between them, the thralls shuddered at the mad laugh that rang out from the prince’s bedchamber.
“It ain’t the woman he wants,” one of the thralls dared to say.
“Hush!” the other warned, looking about them for listening, spying ears.
“Well, it ain’t,” the other declared.
They passed Lord Anchises on the stairway but avoided the Lord of Security’s eye. Neither did they look at the woman being hustled along beside Lord Anchises. There would be time enough to take a good look at her when they were sent in to fetch her dead body.
* * * * *
Sitting alone in his cramped cell as morning light speared down from the high window, Giles Kolovis repeatedly washed his hands in the basin of murky water he kept beside his cot. He could not rid himself of the stench of death nor the sight of the women he had helped throw into the incinerator. Clenching his jaw, he laved his hands once more with the strong lye soap and washed them again and again until his hands were red and raw.
Just as Stavros Constantine had a mole in the keep at Modartha, Giles was the spy in Stavros’ keep, in thrall to Lucien Korvina. It was a bastard’s job but it was important—as Lord Petros had reminded Giles many times.
Having allowed himself to be captured by Stavros’ men, enduring the injection of a single drop of the vile prince’s blood into his arm so the bastard could enthrall him, had been both risky and degrading for Giles. Lucien’s blood was far more powerful and not even a gallon of the inferior Constantine blood could have overridden Lucien’s prior claim to Giles’ allegiance. There had never been a chance of a new enthrallment replacing the old. It was the thought of being contaminated with any part of that vile bastard’s body that sickened Giles and strengthened his desire to see Stavros Constantine defeated.
Word had to be sent to Modartha so the special one could be watched day and night. It was not enough that she was supposed to be an untouchable, for Stavros Constantine operated by his own set of deranged rules. He was as liable to do the vile things he cackled about as he pulled his pud as he was to slit a thrall’s throat on a wager to see how long it took the poor man to die, wasting precious sustenance.
Thralls were as necessary as special ones but thralls were becoming as extinct as usable humans. Thralls—those humans Revenants used to protect them and to do their bidding—were expendable. Thralls were not exempt from being drained or murdered as a prince or lord decided. Rarely, though, were they ever turned, for thralls tended to be lumbering giants with little or no real intelligence.
Giles was an exception to the rule. As tall as any thrall ever shanghaied into a Revenant’s service, almost as brawny as Prince Lucien, and keenly intelligent, Giles had been the right man to pick for the job of spying at Duaric Castle. He was fiercely loyal to Lucien Korvina and willing to do what it took to keep his prince safe from Stavros Constantine’s maniacal p
lans.
The scent would not leave his hands and Giles cursed, taking up the basin and flinging it aside, splattering water over the stone wall. He sat down heavily upon his bunk and tried to blot out the ravaged face of the last woman he had helped remove from Prince Stavros’ bedchamber.
Burying his head in his hands, Giles wept. He had been a warrior—a tough and gruff soldier—before being captured by Prince Lucien’s men. He had known death and had looked it in the eye many times, dealing it out more times than he cared to remember. But the sight of that poor woman lying brutalized shook Giles Kolovis to his foundation.
“I’m going to do this to his woman,” Stavros had chirped as he danced around the thralls as they carried the dead woman away. “I’m going to make this seem like child’s play when I have his woman in my hands!”
The memory of the dead woman’s empty eye sockets, the vision of those pretty eyes sitting atop Stavros’ wickedly long fingernails with him waving those bloody trophies about, brought the bile to Giles’ throat and he bent over and vomited, going to one knee with the force of his retching.
If there was, indeed, a woman in Prince Lucien’s life now, a consort, a woman he cared enough about to claim as his own, that one had to be protected at all costs.
Chapter Six
Khamsin awoke feeling hot, and sweaty and confined. Before she opened her eyes, she thought perhaps she was back on the ship, wedged in behind Minerva and Portia, their overweight bodies jamming her against the bulkhead. She wriggled and felt the hairy arm lying atop her hip and reached out to lift it away.
“Move, Portia,” she mumbled.
It was the groan—deep and male—that brought Khamsin’s eyes open and she stared in horror at the face that was almost nose to nose with hers.
And the green eyes that were looking back at her.
Khamsin swallowed. She became aware of the heat that flowed down her body from thigh to calf and knew Prince Lucien’s leg was pressed against her.
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