Aurora's Triangle

by Titania Ladley

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  2932 Ross Clark Circle, #384

  Dothan, AL 36301

  Aurora’s Triangle

  Copyright © 2006 by Titania Ladley

  Cover by Scott Carpenter

  ISBN: 1-59998-374-5

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: December 2006

  Aurora’s Triangle

  Titania Ladley

  Dedication

  To my wonderful editor, Jewell Mason. Thanks for believing in me and for your sharp 20/20. I couldn’t have done it without you.

  And to the talented author Arianna Hart, who helped my vampires to see the light of day. Thanks for always being there for me.

  Chapter One

  Hartford Science Research Station and Mining Center

  Svalvik Island off the northern coast of Greenland

  March, present day

  “Dead bodies?” Aurora Seagress’s pulse palpitated, skipping a beat. She swallowed the thick lump of fear wedged in her throat. The chill of the underground laboratory freezer blasted against her face, though she noted it wasn’t quite as cold as it should be. With her hand on the door latch, she stared across the space at the long tubes of ice. The scent of cold metal and harsh chemicals assaulted her nostrils as she stepped inside, her legs trembling in protest. Peering through the white plumes of fog, she scanned the glassy cylinders laid out on the metal slab and blinked several times.

  Her mouth went dry. She shouldn’t have come in here, she admitted, brushing aside the guilt as she halted her approach. But Professor Kendall’s request to stay away from the coolers had stirred her curiosity. She heaped on more shame, recalling the pallor of his skin and the fogged oxygen mask right before they’d flown him out by chopper after he’d exhibited cardiac symptoms. Only moments ago, he’d demanded she go with him, not for his own comfort and moral support, he’d confessed, but to prevent her from nosing into his private experiments during his absence. Claustrophobic, she’d resisted climbing into that little propeller-capped bubble, and the more she’d refused, the more his garbled pleas had evolved into a snarling, irrational state of panic. Ultimately, she’d talked him into allowing her to stay behind to man the center temporarily until his return.

  Better that than to lose her mind, cause a helicopter crash and see them all dead.

  So in his reluctant state of agreement, he’d presented one firm condition. She had to swear she wouldn’t gain entry to the underground space, and Aurora had assured him of her trustworthiness. But she always had been a good liar. Not long after the helicopter had risen into the crimson and neon green mural of the northern lights, she’d had one foot in the laboratory door.

  Alone now on the island, she snorted aloud. Like anyone’s curiosity could withstand that much temptation. Kind of like telling a child, “Don’t you dare eat that candy,” while waving a giant lollipop right beneath their nose.

  Ignoring the guilt, she stared agog at the frozen bodies and wondered if Theodore Kendall’s so-called mining and research of minerals here in northern Greenland had all been a front of some sort. And if so, what had been her purpose here as far as he was concerned? Why had Theodore chosen her out of all the scientists who’d applied for the assistant miner’s position? True, she had her own very personal reasons for pursuing the job, and may never have taken it if not for the secret connection with Kendall she intended to explore. Momentary worry edged under her skin. She hoped to God, regardless of whatever he was hiding, it didn’t interfere with her selfish reasons for coming here.

  Aurora moved closer, her breath churning out in white puffs of anticipation. Her heart thumped with both fear and excitement at her unbelievable find. She approached the large slab table, gaining her courage by fixing her eyes on the wall beyond rather than on the subjects. Suspicious now of the professor’s inconsistencies, she played back one particular statement in her head.

  “Stay upstairs—and whatever you do, don’t alter the thermostats. Please, I beg you to do as I say.” With his thin hand clutching hers, he’d said it in desperation. The chopper blades had whirred overhead, stirring the frigid Arctic air and sending the snow up in a powdery cloud of dust. The EMT attendants had barked the need for Theodore to relax as they hurriedly slapped EKG leads on his chest.

  Right, don’t turn up the heat, she’d mused incredulously, even with subzero temperatures outside? Why? The questions had plagued her, and doubts had begun to crystallize in her brain.

  Aurora inhaled, then exhaled on a lengthy release. She slowly lowered her gaze to the corpses. “Well, now we know why, don’t we? We’ve got ourselves two handsome, naked men—dead men, at that,” she reminded herself.

  A tremor wormed its way up her spine. I’m alone on a remote island, completely by myself, with two creepy cadavers.

  She forced the thought from her mind, but morbid curiosity—or scientific inquisitiveness, she wasn’t sure which—had her eyes flitting from one striking face to the other. She avoided sliding her gaze down the length of them and instead willed the wheels in her distrustful mind to turn.

  Of course, now she understood why she wasn’t to alter the thermostats. He’d obviously meant the freezer’s settings rather than the laboratory facility itself. To raise the temperatures would risk thawing, which in turn would leave them with rotting bodies and nowhere but aboveground in a snowdrift to bury them.

  “But…but wait.” Aurora skimmed a hand over the ice tube closest to her. She couldn’t help gawking at the face of the oblivious hunk. Beads of frigid water coated her palm. “Oh shit, the ice is melting.”

  She’d thought the cooler hadn’t felt quite cold enough when she’d entered, and once again, her sharp senses had been correct. Well, she’d definitely have to defy Theodore’s order regarding the altering of the thermostat as well. No way she’d be letting these men thaw just to obey her boss. Her stomach clenched. Lord, she prayed there wasn’t some sort of mechanical malfunction in the coolant unit. Alone at the facility, and possessing minimal knowledge or skill in machinery of this sort, it wouldn’t be the ideal situation to find herself in. She could radio for help, although depending on the nature of the emergency, response could take hours, days, even weeks. Theodore had been lucky the station had happened to be in the chopper’s current flight path when she’d radioed out a mayday distress call following his chest pains an hour ago.

  “Better get right to it and check that refrigeration unit.” Aurora pressed a palm to her belly and groaned. She could hear the Arctic winds howling aboveground. “I wouldn’t want to have to drag two dead bodies upstairs all by myself, and bury them in the snow, now would I?”

  She started to turn, but halted. How long had these lifeless bodies been here? She wondered if Kendall had frozen them on purpose, keeping them preserved belowground the entire month she’d been here apprenticing. And if so, why would he hide them from her? What in the hell had the professor intended to do with them?

  Goose bumps prickled up her back. She laughed hollowly, the sound of it eerie to her own ears as it reverberated in the fluorescent, blue-glowin
g room.

  “Maybe the professor’s a serial murderer?” She suppressed another nervous giggle, trying to picture the quirky, skinny scientist wielding an axe.

  Okay, so she was attempting to find humor in the situation to ease her nerves. It did help somewhat, she admitted, yet her stomach swirled with some sort of odd thrill she could only attribute to being a scientist. The sight that lay before her drew her closer, like a moth to a flame, a scholar to an irresistible discovery. She leaned over the first body, knowing she had only a few minutes to indulge her morbid curiosity. Aurora perused the specimen, her heart pounding in fascination as her hot breath swirled out in a misty fog around her face. In its thawing state, the ice shone as clear as glass, the room’s lighting glinting off the cylinder’s surface. The solid tube outlined the subject as if he were the stick within a frozen pop treat.

  She continued to study the one closest to her, a ruggedly handsome man with short-cropped, thick black hair and sharp features. The eyes were closed above the straight nose, and she suddenly found herself wishing he would open them. Would they be brown? Hazel? Green?

  “Uh, he’s dead, Aurora.” She chuckled even while she honed her gaze and mentally recorded the data of every pore, every striking plane and angle. Unable to resist the urge, she dragged her fingers over the ice just above his scalp, as if to stroke the thick head of hair.

  “The thermostat,” she murmured to herself. “Go check the thermostat.” She planted her hand above Ice Man Number One’s face with perhaps two inches of ice thickness between them. Aurora stared down at him, her fingers spread, her gaze sliding lower across the high cheekbones, full lips, and the cleft in the strong chin.

  “Damn, but you were one hot guy.” She gawked at the wide, muscle-packed shoulders, the thick chest with just a smattering of sable fur, the nice, rippled abs. And…the impressive cock and full sac nestled atop a bed of dark, curly hair.

  “Hmm, must have been quite the stud in your day.” She was just about to withdraw her hand and do a quick study of the other subject when an odd wave of energy flushed through her. Aurora gasped as sudden, explicit, sexual images flashed in her mind. Three people, a dozen limbs entwined, moans and screams. Arousal slithered into her bloodstream and hummed deep in her loins. She couldn’t stop the mental pictures running through her head. She tried to pull her hand from the surface of the ice, but it was stuck. Panic bubbled up behind her breastbone.

  “Oh, God, please don’t—” Before she could finish the mumbled plea, her hand came free. She stared at the redness in her palm, then her gaze shifted to the man as a movement caught her eye. Did his body just twitch?

  She stood there for several seconds listening to the quiet whir of the cooling unit’s fan. Her pulse pounded and her eyes narrowed…watching, waiting, for what? For a corpse to come to life?

  “Ridiculous.” She chuckled uneasily. “Of course he didn’t move. He’s dead, you idiot.”

  Aurora let out a long breath and shook off the terror that threatened to choke her. To prove to herself she wasn’t some skittish, brainless twit, she walked around the large table to study the other man. This time, she held her hands clasped behind her back while she bent over the ice and considered the second cadaver. He wasn’t quite as muscle-bound as the other, but his long, lean body certainly appealed to her just as much. Sandy blond hair slightly longer than the other’s framed a face she could only describe as beautiful. Thick brown eyebrows and lashes that fanned over sculpted cheeks were the first facial features that drew her attention.

  “Let’s see, I bet your eyes are blue. And the other guy…” She shot a quick glance across the ice humps. “His are brown.”

  Pleased with the fantasy of two pairs of sultry male eyes gazing at her, she continued her perusal of Ice Man Number Two. He’d definitely taken care of his body just as much as Ice Man Number One. But where the first had a bodybuilder’s physique, the second had more of an athlete’s build, like a cross-country biker or a rock climber. She stepped to her right and took in the nicely formed, smooth chest, the flat abdomen and the narrow hips.

  Unable to resist, she unclasped her hands and set them on the damp table next to the ice, leaning closer to get a more detailed look. Her gaze flitted lower. “Wow, would you look at—”

  Aurora gasped, cutting off her own rambling comment when her hand brushed a cold, fleshy object. She felt something wrap around her wrist making her gaze jerk down the length of her right arm. The sensation of ice wound tight over her pulse point was confirmed to be a hand—the dead man’s hand. She’d been so fascinated with his striking looks, she hadn’t noticed the ice had melted around his lower arm leaving it completely exposed on the table’s edge.

  Her head swam with dizziness. The surrealism of the unexpected, frightening moment made her world wobble. Her wrist tingled like it might after an insect had dined on the tissue near her erratically beating pulse.

  “Oh—oh, God…” She swallowed audibly. Her heart leapt into her throat making it impossible to scream.

  Before she could attempt to yank her wrist free and run, she heard the crack of splitting ice. Aurora’s legs trembled, suddenly feeling like limp taffy. She fell to her knees at the slab’s edge and a shriek of terror finally tore from her chest. Looking up, she watched, spellbound, as the man rose slowly to a sitting position, chunks of ice splattering around him. The broken pieces made a song of clinks and zings as they bounced and slid off the table and onto the concrete floor. All the while, he bent forward, his enormous hand remaining wrapped about her arm, steely firm and unbelievably strong—for a dead man.

  Her knees seemed to be frozen to the floor. She gaped up at him for eons, mesmerized by his eyes. Finally, she snatched in a lungful of air and caught the subtle scent of man mixed with a perplexing tropical aroma. Emotions and fears all seemed to scatter as one thought echoed in her mind.

  I was wrong about the eyes. They’re not blue. They’re shimmering golden brown…just like the fires of hell.

  * * *

  Endre Boldizsar gazed down into orbs the very color of violets. The striking irises were ringed by a thin green circle, like leaves framing purple blooms. Ah, and those pupils…damn, they were dilated like the eyes of a female Vencelze vampire in heat!

  She didn’t so much as blink, but instead, took on the expression of a human already enspelled by one of his nearly extinct Vencelze kin. He hadn’t yet invaded her thoughts to perform such a spell, so the very sight of her free-willed response to him awakened long-buried sensations within his soul. To finally face her flesh-to-flesh did strange things to his insides. He took one quick downward sweep of her from head to knees, and it nearly made him shift into his falcon state of being and whisk her off to his home on Balitori Island. The honey-toned hair hung over a slim shoulder and draped across the large swell of one breast. It appeared to be drawn into a low ponytail at the nape of her appetizing neck. He could well imagine releasing the shimmering tresses and entangling his hands in the thickness as he took her with robust passion…as he sank his fangs into that smooth, blood-engorged nook above her collarbone.

  Endre shook the tempting thoughts from his mind and tightened his hold on her wrist. He withdrew his talons from her flesh, already having drawn from her blood source through their hollow hooks. Thank the Vencelze vampire god that she’d placed her hand within reach. Another hour and the melting ice would have left him thawed and permanently deceased before he had the chance to seek a warm drop of lifeblood.

  “What’s your name?” Because of his many out-of-body trips, he already knew the answer to that, but there was no need to frighten her more than she already was.

  Her eyes widened. She swayed against his grip. “A-Aurora.”

  He watched, almost entranced himself, when her small Adam’s apple rose and fell against the silky skin of her neck. It drew a swift intake of breath from him. Holy ancient vampires of Hungary, that truly was sexual desire he felt stirring within his loins.

  “How fittin
g. Aurora, like the northern lights of this region and the southern ones of mine. Well, Aurora…” Damn, it was good to finally speak her name, to feel it roll off his tongue. He leaped off the table revved to get this show rolling. “I’m in your debt. I’d like to thank you for giving me a lifeline.”

  “Lifeline?”

  He drew her up clutching her arm against his chest. She hissed in a lungful of air, her gaze devouring him, seeming to wrap around his vampire’s heart and suck the very life from him.

  “You know, if you keep looking at me that way, I’m going to have to have my way with you before awakening Tabor.”

  “T-Tabor?”

  He chuckled at her adorable, stammering confusion. “Yes, my big, icy friend there. I can assure you he’s as eager as I was to be freed from that cold prison. He may appear to be dead, but he’s very much alive. His physical body’s frozen, however, his vampire soul isn’t.”

  “V-v-vampire?”

  Endre’s gaze fell to her quivering, plump pink lips. He shook his head, bewildered by the overwhelming need that assailed him to simply kiss her. Amazingly, just a few drops of her blood through his talons had seemed to satisfy his normally robust appetite for the warm, rich human wine.

  “Do you always repeat what people say and turn it into a question? Yes, I said vampire—we’re both Vencelze vampires. Ah, but let me make the introductions.” He smiled thinly and led her over to Tabor’s side. “I’m Endre Boldizsar, and this frozen block of fucking ice is my good friend, Tabor Firenzka. I’m sure you’re wondering why we were placed ‘on the rocks’, so to speak.”

  She nodded, curiosity nearly edging the fear from her eyes.

  “Mmm, well you see, Professor Kendall lured us here decades ago from our home on Balitori Island. He used some clever bait he’d invented for our feathered forms of being and drew us irresistibly north. He then captured us and froze us into near extinction.” He sneered. “It seemed the man had an unfounded fear of our immortality and what our fangs’ venom could mean for mankind.”