“What? What happened?” Hellion asked, groaning as his aches and pains came back online.
“You went to Valhalla, sir.” The awe in his voice was hindered by residual ash and foul air, but it wasn’t lost. “And came back.”
“Valhalla.” Hellion’s weak surprise still translated.
I held his hand. “We made it.”
Darius picked through the dead, both offense and defense, his face drawn. “Mia cara, I’m so sorry.”
I shook my head, stroking Hellion’s forehead as Stearns set about tending his copious wounds. “It’s going to be fine.”
Micah balanced on the balls of his feet nearby. “I’m sorry too, Maddy.”
Looking over, I felt my gaze cool. “Your faith, your issue.” Then I drew a deep breath and let it out with a short choke. “But thank you for fighting with us.”
“I could have done more.” Sincere shame seemed to draw his features tight.
“Next time.”
Darius knelt beside Hellion. A faintly pink tear rolled down his cheek with painstaking gravity. “Hellion. Valhalla?”
“Apparently.” Stearns moved his arm and Hellion cried out.
The medic looked at me. “He needs the hospital.”
“It’s too far.” Hellion panted through the pain, eyes glazed.
“What of Darach?” Darius looked around.
“No idea. He never showed.” I couldn’t concern myself with him at the moment.
Bahlin was settled beside Hellion.
I turned, never letting go of Hellion, and took the dragon shifter’s hand, holding both to my cheeks. Eyes closed, I reveled in the reality we’d all made it. Looking at Bahlin, though, it was clear it had been close. “I’m so sorry.”
“Enough apologies for the night,” he grumbled. “Everything hurts. Do me a favor and find Hellion’s best whiskey, then be good lass and bring it out.”
Stearns drew a flask from his bag. “I’d be a poor Irishman if I wasn’t prepared for the worst, sir.”
Bahlin tried to grin, but his lip, split in several places, pulled and made him wince. Still, he took a swig, gasping at the burn. “Great Grenla, that’s good.”
“Pass it over.” Hellion took a long swallow, mirroring the face and sound Bahlin had made. “He got the good stuff, all right.”
Hellion looked at me, pale and sweating. “We were to be married tonight.”
Bahlin stilled, only the slight tightening of his hand giving away his tension.
I swallowed and gently pulled free from both men’s grasps.
They let me go.
Turning on my knees. I cupped Hellion’s battered face in my hands. “We were. The priest is still here, baby. Nothing says we can’t still have the ceremony performed.”
Hellion closed his eyes. “I want to see you walk through the gardens and come to me under the pergola. A white dress, silk—” He grunted, sweat sheening his chest as Stearns continued to work on his broken body. “White silk,” he repeated.
“I’ll wear whatever you want.” I stroked his forehead. Leaning forward, I brushed my lips against his and he sighed, his mouth relaxing a bit under my tender ministrations. “I love you, Hellion.”
“And I you, Maddy.” He reached for my face and ended up grabbing my shoulder when Stearns anesthetized his leg with a big-ass needle filled with something clear. The low moan that rumbled from his chest worried me, but as the drug worked and his grip eased, I began to breathe again.
I couldn’t stop touching him, my hands roaming over his face and body. I did my best to keep from bumping open wounds or the myriad blossoming bruises or the evidently broken bones. Then I came to his hands. The image of the dark magic, oily and thick, seeping out of the very hands that had loved and protected me… I knew without a doubt that I’d fight harder than ever to keep him from crossing so far into the dark that the light in him was lost.
Instead of bringing it up, though, I lifted his good hand and rested it against my cheek. “Do you want to marry me?”
“More than anything, mo shíorghrá.” He closed his eyes, leaning his cheek into my thumb where it stroked back and forth along his cheekbone. “I think, if it’s all the same to you, it’d be best if we wait until I can stand, aye? I’d come to ye as a whole man on our wedding night.”
“Until you can stand, then, and not a moment longer.” I laid my lips to the palm of his hand. “In the meantime…” My eyes narrowed. Someone was slinking through the gardens carrying— “Gun!”
Darius spun and launched himself in the direction of the offender. The rat-tat-tat of automatic weapon fire shattered the night. Vampires swarmed in that direction. More gunfire preceded deafening silence.
Darius stood slowly, turning toward me. He’d taken two direct hits—one to his abdomen and one to his chest, forty-five degrees apart. With a short nod of acknowledgment, he went to his knees before face-planting it in the dirt.
Even from my vantage point, I could see blood soaking the ground beneath the wounded vampire.
Efien made it to Darius’s side before I reached my feet.
“I hate getting shot,” he groaned.
Hellion’s eyes sought out his friend and second. “How bad is it?”
Efien answered. “His heart beats. He’ll be faster to heal now, so long as it wasn’t hit.”
“It wasn’t.” Darius’s words, while reassuring, were slow and drunken.
“He needs blood.”
Micah knelt beside them, rolling his shirtsleeve up. “I believe he’s rather fond of this vintage.”
Darius sank his fangs into Micah’s wrist at the same time I turned back to Hellion.
Efien’s hand on my arm stopped me. “The shooter.”
“Is undoubtedly dead,” I responded.
“By my own hand.” He knelt at my side. “He wore this.”
Efien handed me a pin that had been ripped off a jacket of heavy, dark canvas. “What is it?” I squinted, unable to make out details.
“It is the traditional double-headed eagle sitting beneath a crown and atop a sword and sash. The sash says ‘God and My Right’.”
My blood became sluggish as the rest of me as I lifted my face to the tall vampire’s. “What does it mean?” My words sounded tinny and far away.
“He was a Rosicrucian assassin. They’ve found us.”
Oh, shit.
About the Author
Denise Tompkins lives in the heart of the South where the neighbors still know your name, all food forms are considered fry-able and bugs die only to be reincarnated in aggressive, blood-craving triplicate. Thrilled to finally live somewhere that can boast 3 ½ seasons (winter’s only noticeable because the trees are naked), her favorite season is definitely fall. It’s the time of year when the gardens are just about to pass into winter’s brief silence, and the leaves are out to prove that nature is the most brilliant artist of all.
A life-long voracious reader, Denise has three favorite authors. Why three? Because favorite authors are like chips: a person can’t have just one. Her little house was so overrun with books last year that her darling husband bought her an e-reader out of self-preservation. He was (legitimately) afraid she might begin throwing out pots and pans to make room for more books, and he didn’t want to starve.
You can find out more about Denise by visiting her website, www.denise-tompkins.com, or by following her on Twitter, @DeniseJTompkins.
Look for these titles by Denise Tompkins
Now Available:
The Niteclif Evolutions
Legacy
Wrath
Haunted by personal betrayal, stalked by a murderer and taunted by destiny.
Finding justice—not to mention a little faith—has never been so hard.
Wrath
© 2011 Denise Tompkins
The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 2
A murderer is terrorizing the streets of London, targeting women who look suspiciously like Maddy. Under the mantle of darkness, the killer a
ttacks his victims from behind, severing their heads with startling efficiency and single-minded brutality. A single gold coin is left at the scene of every crime, buried in the neck of each victim. Nothing adds up, and the deeper Maddy gets into the investigation, the more she learns that there are hostile eyes in every faction—some malicious, others murderous.
Amid her struggles to stop a seemingly unstoppable killer, Maddy learns that dreams are far too fragile to juggle. Her newfound love is crumbling around her under the burdens of guilt and blame, and where one man abandons her, another is slated by the gods to take his place. Defiant, Maddy finds her struggles with free will versus destiny have only just begun.
Figuring out whom she should trust, and when, will force Maddy to reassess her alliances…and reaffirm her fragile mortality.
Warning: Contains Scottish and Irish brogues, heads that—literally—roll, seriously random acts of violence, heartbreak and hope, explicit m/f sex in a variety of locations, a voyeuristic vampire and one dinner table that will never be the same.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Wrath:
Whoa, baby.
The man was built beautifully when he was in his shirt, but out of it? He was a visual orgasm. More muscular than Bahlin, he wasn’t muscle-bound but rather seriously ripped. There wasn’t a stray hair anywhere on his chest and only the thinnest stripe from his bellybutton running into his trousers.
He caught me looking and I blushed. He didn’t laugh but came over to my side of the bed and knelt on the floor beside me. Taking my hand, he kissed each knuckle “May this body please you in any way you see fit to use it, Madeleine Niteclif, be it for sword arm, shield arm, lance, magic, or love.” He looked stunned at his own words. He scrubbed his hands over his face and muttered an unintelligible oath before getting back to business.
I pushed myself to sitting, grimacing with the movement and ignoring the unexpected oath of devotion. “What are you going to do, Hellion? Bahlin’s tried, and the fae healer did a little, but nothing’s finished the process.”
“Oh, I’ll do a bit of this and a bit of that.” He cracked his knuckles and eased me back onto the bed so I was lying flat. He lifted my shirt up so my stomach was bared. He pulled a small dirk from his boot top and, without pausing, sliced his palm open. I gasped. “Shh, you’ll distract me.” He took the knife and laid it across my stomach so it pointed north to south, then he began to drip blood around the knife. He scrubbed the wound to keep it open and, when he had enough blood gathered, he began to trace runes onto my skin, using the blood as paint. The patterns were impossible to discern. The one thing I could say with certainty was that they were interconnected. He got to the last rune at due north, and he said, “This is it, Madeleine. Do you want me to take your voice? This is going to hurt, and I can’t have you scream.”
I nodded, and he did the same thing as earlier, leaving me with a scratchy throat. He finished the last line in the rune, and my stomach lit up, the runes blazing gold and red. Black smoke seeped from around the knife and seemed to come from my skin. I screamed but it was nothing more than a hiss of air. The sheer pain was ripped straight from my gut. I cried and I thrashed, but Hellion held me immobile, pressing down on the hilt of the knife with one hand and laying his other forearm across my shoulders. He ended up nicking me, and when my blood joined his, the runes burned even more intensely for an interminable second, and then it was over.
I lay there panting, fighting nausea. It hadn’t taken more than a literal minute though it felt as if it had passed on a time-lapse camera, each frame sliding by at a third its normal rate.
Hellion laid his hand over my forehead, and again the nausea faded. He said, “Stay here.” I nodded, and he murmured the releasing spell for my voice. He went to the sink and grabbed a washcloth, wet it and came back to clean my stomach off.
“What was that?” I panted.
“It’s a rather complex, arcane piece of magic that has been all but forgotten. It’s used for healing when one is dying and for, ah, well, death itself. Different order for the runes and a few different words, and you’d be pushing daisies before you knew what had happened.”
“What do you mean dying? I wasn’t that bad.”
“Days more and you would have been.”
I sat up and realized I wasn’t sore. I looked inside my T-shirt, and all the bruising was gone. I scrambled off the bed and Hellion let me go. I raced to the bathroom and shut the door. Lifting my T-shirt, I twisted in front of the mirror: the bruising over my kidneys was gone. I looked closely at the area over my heart where Tarrek’s curse had taken me, and the black blistering was gone. I felt really good. I walked quickly back into the bedroom. I stopped across from Hellion and smiled a true smile, and he gave one in return.
“Better?”
I nodded. Then my smile faltered. “I have to go back to Bahlin, Hellion. It’s not a choice for me right now. You understand that, right?”
“I do and I don’t.” He moved farther onto the bed, propping himself up on the pillows and watching me. “But I do believe it’s for the best, at least until we sort out how you and I are going to proceed.” He let his head list to one side, and his eyes closed gently before he asked, “My god has deemed us a mated pair and all but ordained it. I must ask, do you think you could love me, Madeleine? Or spend your life with me?”
Why do the supes always go straight for the kill shot? I wondered. “I don’t know, Hellion. There’s something between us, and it’s only the second time in my life I’ve felt this type of connection, and the first didn’t end so well. I want to be careful, okay?” I took the chair he’d vacated earlier and watched him a bit warily. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me at this point, but I also knew he had the potential for a wicked temper and the means to back it up.
He shifted again, settling the covers around his hips. Without his shirt, he looked like a model for the cover of a bodice-ripping romance. I was staring at his torso again when he asked, “Is what you feel for me the same as what you felt for Bahlin?”
I thought about it. “No. And I don’t like that. I’m not like most women, Hellion. Emotions scare the ever-loving hell out of me.”
“Why?”
“I’ve never had luck in relationships.” I struggled to find the words to adequately explain and finally just gave up, shrugging. I would have to use what I had, adequate or not. “I’m just not that woman, the one who dreams of the fairytale ending, or the one who runs off with a man because he professes to love her, or even the one who generally accepts happily ever after.” I thought back to the wish at the stones, and my bitter thoughts about love being an add-on to life. “I’m not your storybook heroine, Hellion, so how can I just accept a storybook life?” I stood and rolled my head around on my neck. Man, I was tense.
He threw the covers back and stood, a small smile playing across his face. He shoved his hands in his pants pockets, the muscles on his stomach bunching. “I’m truly glad you’re not that woman, Madeleine.”
I took a small step toward him and he reciprocated, moving only when I moved and only so far as I went, until we met halfway and faced each other. “You say that now, but you’ll undoubtedly learn that I won’t have my hand forced, not by threat or magic or fear or, sadly, even love. I make my decisions in my own time, so don’t get too excited about finding the perfect minister to officiate just yet.” Though it still surprised the hell out of me, I admitted, “I like you, but that doesn’t a marriage make. Let’s see how this goes and also see how things with Bahlin work out before we go jumping from any bridges.” I laid my hand flat on his bare chest, and the feel of his heart was soothing to me. I jerked my hand back.
He reached out and traced my cheek with his thumb. “I understand the fear of what might be, but why not celebrate what is? You respond to me, I respond to you. For now, it’s enough.” He shook his head, and a crooked grin graced his lips. “It’s amazing to me, this shift, but I’ll accept it at face value. I wish you’d consider the same so we could
at the very least see what lies between us.”
“Seems like you weren’t listening.” I smiled to lessen the sting of my words. “I don’t trust anything like this, Hellion, particularly anything this easy. I just don’t. And you sound like you’re trying to get into my pants, nothing more.” He opened his mouth, undoubtedly protest, but I held up my hand to stop him. “You’ve done an emotional one-eighty— first wanting me dead before declaring me your true love because someone told you to. I’m skeptical, no matter what I inexplicably feel. I’m disappointed I let things get as far as they did this morning.” I stepped back and he followed me. “Back off, Hellion.” I sighed. It felt like I’d spent the morning telling men to give me some space.
He took a step back and reciprocated my sigh but his was followed by a sudden grin. “This will be great fun.”
“What?”
“Convincing you to follow your heart.”
“And are you so sure of the answer?”
“Odin’s spoken. Besides, the true answer will be what’s best for all, even if it hurts initially.”
“How can you be so stoic?” I demanded.
He shrugged and beamed. “I’m Irish.”
Saving the love of her life could mean letting her inner darkness out to play.
Blood of an Ancient
© 2013 Rinda Elliott
Beri O’Dell, Book 2
Beri O’Dell is on a mission. She has to rip back into a hell dimension fast, but needs two things first—the blood of an ancient and a fix for her friend Blythe’s magic, which careened out of control after the battle with the Dweller.
Finding ancient blood isn’t easy when the old ones are rare and unwilling to donate. She needs to find Blythe’s former mentor…except the woman has lost her mind and joined a traveling band of singing witches.
That’s not the only magical monkey on her back. Nikolos is imprisoned, and after a screwed-up spell lets her witness the horror that has become his life, her fear for him grows by the day. Now there’s another problem—a powerful being unleashed during the battle with the Dweller likes her gluttonous new existence, and will kill anyone who threatens it.
Vengeance: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 3 Page 30