The Red Lily (Vampire Blood)

by Juliette Cross

  “Thank you, milady.” With a duck of the chin, the smithy sauntered off and up the ladder.

  Deb stepped forward with a smile upon her face. The three of them ambled toward the exit together.

  “Thank you for taking the risk and having us here,” said Sienna.

  Deb scoffed. “No need to thank me. The vampires made me an enemy when they took my father from me.” She shot an apologetic look to Nikolai. “The vampires of the Glass Tower, that is.”

  Nikolai walked between them. “Yes, I understand. There is good reason why I am no longer a part of their ranks.”

  Once they reached the top, Deb held out her hand for him to shake. He did.

  “If more vampires were like you, there would be no need for a bloody war.”

  He smiled and released her hand, uncomfortable with the compliment. “Farewell and safe travels.”

  “Aye,” replied Deb. “Same to you both.”

  …

  Sienna took the arm Nikolai offered her as he led them through an alley onto the street, the clip-clop of his boots and the swish of her skirt a soft accompaniment. Lobdell was smaller than Sylus, but it appeared to be more sophisticated. Cobblestone streets and paved walkways instead of dirt roads. Most shops were closed now. The streets were quiet except for the pub two blocks up, spilling yellow light onto the walkway. Street lanterns marked every corner. The starry night was clear of any clouds that had hampered the day, a half moon offering a luminescent glow.

  “It’s a beautiful night,” she said, as if they were simply two lovers taking a leisurely stroll together.

  “It is.” He crooked his arm against his side, drawing her closer, covering her gloved hand with his own. She liked that. “You did a fine job in there. Even if you overstated on my behalf.”

  She tilted her head up at him. “It wasn’t an overstatement. What I said was true. Arabelle has spoken nonstop in her letters of you and your training, the tireless hours you’ve put in, the exhausting repetition of training new recruits.”

  Sienna cherished those words about the lieutenant in Arabelle’s letters. She had imagined how he might look instructing the soldiers on the sandy shores of Cutters Cove. So grave and stern, the wind tousling his blond hair. Funny that she thought he was too serious to have such beautiful hair. Somehow, it made him even more alluring.

  He clamped his jaw tight. The light of the corner lamp edging his profile in gold, his jaw a hard slant.

  “Are you upset to have so many more recruits to train?” she asked, trying to find out the mystery that had cast such a gloom.

  “No,” he answered definitively. “The recruits are needed. Direly. The Barrow brothers have become my sergeants at arms and can assist with training.”

  “Then what has put you in such a mood? You’ve been so…angry since tea.”

  He pulled her to a stop before the tavern, raucous laughter and singing spilling out of the open door. His face was fixed in darkness with his back to the bright window of the pub, silhouetting his broad shoulders and blond hair that hung loose and wild to his nape.

  She could no longer make out his expression. But his hand tightened on her arm, keeping her in place as he pressed close and brushed a stray lock of her hair off of her cheek, his fingers leaving a trail of heat in their wake. They feathered down along her jaw to her chin, his thumb brushing across her parted lips. She could not move if the devil himself were after her. She was transfixed, his vampire eyes gleaming bright in the dark.

  “You, Sienna. You make me angry…and afraid and desperate and fiercely protective and…”

  He swept his thumb back a second time.

  Sienna let her lips part farther, her breath coming out in white puffs. A deep growl rumbled in his chest, a beastly sound so low it trembled down her spine and settled low in her belly, evoking a breathy gasp and a tingle between her legs.

  “The things I want to do to you, sweetheart. They are not good. But they would feel…delicious.”

  “Tell me,” she whispered.

  He chuckled darkly. “You tread such a dangerous line. I am doing my best to keep our relationship professional. But it is near impossible when you say such things to me with that look on your face. If I voice my thoughts, there will be no turning back.” He brushed the pad of his thumb a third time. “Are you sure?”

  She slid her tongue out and licked his thumb, holding his catlike gaze.

  “I have my answer.” He lifted her bodily and blurred vampire-swift out of the light of the tavern and into the quiet shadow on the next block where the street was empty. Pinning her to the wall with his body, his hands laced with hers and held above her head, his mouth hovered a hairsbreadth away.

  “I want to tear these clothes off of you and taste every inch of your skin. I want to lick you between your thighs till you slide away into oblivion. I want to drive my cock inside you and mark you so deep that you know you are mine. I want to make you come so hard that you beg me to do it again. And again. And again.”

  Then he crushed her mouth with his own, delving his tongue inside and demanding she open for him.

  She did on a frantic whimper with the images he’d conjured floating through her mind. He let one hand go to wrap her nape in a possessive grip, keeping her still, while he plundered her mouth, stroking his tongue deep, giving her a small taste of the beast he planned to unleash. She clenched her free hand in the back of his hair, pulling him closer not pushing away, yearning for more.

  “Nikolai,” was all she could manage when he scraped his canines down the side of her neck without breaking the skin.

  A quiet footfall sounded on the pavement close behind them. Nikolai spun to face the intruder, shielding her with his body. No. Intruders. There was more than one. Sienna caught sight of three men in the royal Legionnaire uniform, silver buttons winking by torchlight.

  “Well, well. So sorry to interrupt your late-night feeding, lieutenant.”

  She knew the voice at once. Sergeant Aleksander Volkov. Nikolai made no reply, watching their movements as the other two moved slowly to flank them. He shifted his body to the left, where the largest of the three vampires had moved in too close.

  “Mmm, but she does look like she tastes so sweet.” Volkov raised his head, nose in the air, and inhaled a deep breath. “Bloody hell, lieutenant. Her scent. How have you not drained her dry?” he asked on a laugh. “Doesn’t she smell sweet, Boris?” he asked the gruff vampire on his right.

  “Aye, sergeant.”

  Nikolai was stone-still, but the tautness of his shoulders and the fists at his sides told her enough.

  “Volkov. If you so much as think of her again, I’ll rip out your throat before you can blink.”

  He laughed, the sound sending a sinister shiver up her spine. “Oh, I plan to do more than think about her.” His voice dropped low and menacing. “You can be sure of that.”

  Then the world turned upside down. Sienna was knocked to the pavement by one of the soldier vampires, but Nikolai tore him away from her. She could make out practically nothing, only blurs of action under the moonlight. Snarls, grunts, and growls filled the night. Then a crunch and one of the soldiers lay in the street, unmoving. Nikolai stood over him, heaving deep breaths, blood dripping from his mouth.

  The second soldier charged Nikolai in a blur, the one called Boris. A blade left Nikolai’s hand and landed in the man’s chest. He howled in pain as he twisted onto the cobblestone street.

  Out of nowhere, Volkov lifted Sienna with a jerk of her arm. She screamed. At the same time, a sharp burn coiled and leaped in her chest, pushing down her arms toward her hands. Then her body was tossed sideways as Nikolai and Volkov tumbled into the street. Just as quickly, the inner fire snuffed out, leaving a warm knot lodged in her chest. She clutched at the spot, while watching Nikolai and Volkov tumbling away.

  The men grappled in a spinning torrent, then one of them flew in the air and hit the cobblestone a block away with a hard thunk. Nikolai stood victorious, though he
wasted no time.

  He scooped her into his arms and ground out, “Close your eyes and hold on.”

  No time for questions or protests. She clung to him tightly, locking her arms around his neck, and buried her face against his chest, knowing what was about to come. He ran in vampire speed, the world blurring past until she felt the cold chill of the open air as they breezed away from Lobdell, spinning deeper into the night. Squeezing her eyes shut to keep the nausea of motion sickness at bay, she held on tight, comforted to be in his arms after the dreadful scene a moment before, the strange tingling fire still burning inside her chest. She’d felt the sensation when she’d been threatened before, though she couldn’t figure out what it meant. Even so, she knew it was nothing to fear, but rather something she needed to know and understand.

  They seemed to run forever. Nikolai refused to stop, even when she whimpered in protest and begged quietly. “I don’t feel well. Can we stop?”

  “Not yet,” came his grating reply, the cold night growing colder as they sped through the dark. “Not until you are safe.”

  She saw the blur of trees and heard the coo of an owl once, longing for the safety of her woodland. But then they were crossing an open plain, the world spinning. The nausea finally overwhelmed her, and she drifted into the black.

  Chapter Eleven

  The dark-haired human servant stoked the fire to life, adding three logs to the oversized grate, nodded to Friedrich, then swiftly left the parlor and closed the door behind him.

  “Do you trust him?” asked Nikolai with a nod to the door.

  “Grant? Absolutely. He won’t say a word. Not even to the other servants.”

  “Good.”

  Nikolai glanced once more at Sienna on the sapphire-blue chaise, still not revived from their journey. Leaning over, he lifted the downy white blanket up over her shoulder. Homing in on her pulse, he found it beating strong and steady. He’d pushed her too far, too long. The vertigo had tipped her over the edge into unconsciousness.

  But there was no way in hell he could’ve stopped to offer her a respite, not until he was double the distance vampires could track. He’d cracked the neck of one of the soldiers, nearly pulling his head off with the force. Unfortunately, he had to leave Volkov and the other hulking one still alive, though both injured enough to make them crawl away and lick their wounds before they could hunt them.

  How had Volkov found them? Was he leading one of the queen’s scouting parties and coincidentally landed in the town the same night they were there to recruit? Highly improbable. Or did the queen’s elixir give him other gifts for hunting down prey? More powerful than he’d presumed.

  Friedrich stepped up beside him, passing him one of two amber-filled glasses. Nikolai wasn’t a heavy drinker but he needed one tonight.

  “Now then,” started Friedrich, cocking one leg as he lay his arm across the mantel. “Start from the beginning.”

  Nikolai stepped away from Sienna, needing some physical distance to focus on anything else but her.

  “The attack came after the rally with the recruits.”

  “Did the Legionnaires see where the meeting was held?”

  “No. I don’t think so. There were only three of them. Perhaps broken off from their main troop as we hadn’t seen any other uniforms in town, and we’d been there all day.”

  “Probably a scouting party.” Friedrich swirled the liquor slowly in the glass. “So they found you by chance?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “It’s possible. The queen has scouting parties everywhere. My uncle has his own minions scouring Izeling here in the north.”

  “So King Dominik has joined forces with his mother?”

  It had not escaped any of them that Marius’s eldest brother and Friedrich’s uncle, King Dominik, ruled this northern kingdom of Izeling with an iron fist. And he was the queen’s firstborn and favorite son. Friedrich risked much to help them, traitors to the crown and allies with the Black Lily.

  Friedrich chuckled darkly. “Of course he has, the brutal bastard. He’s just like my father.” Friedrich lifted his glass in a semi-salute with a sardonic slash of his mouth before he took a large swallow.

  Nikolai needn’t wonder why the duke’s expression went glacial at the thought of his father. It wasn’t a love match between his parents. Princess Katerina, only daughter of the imperial couple King Grindal and Queen Morgrid, was betrothed at birth to the vainglorious Duke of Winter Hill. Marius had told Nikolai he’d never known his sister. By the time he was born, she’d been married off to the northern duke and was sequestered away like a shameful secret. Little did the royal family know that she would make a grand exit from this world, bringing her faithless husband with her. But what Katerina didn’t consider was the scars she’d leave behind on her son. There was no mistaking the haunted look in his eyes now. The wounds still bled, even after all this time when the royal family pretended his mother had never existed. Perhaps that is why the duke was so eager to betray the crown. If so, they had a formidable ally in the duke. Revenge was a cold bedfellow, but it cut with the sharpest blade of all.

  “I imagine you killed them all,” said Friedrich as if he were discussing the price of grain or cattle.

  “Only one.”

  Friedrich arched one dark eyebrow. “Nikolai, the Merciful? Since when did that happen?”

  Nikolai finally shrugged off his coat and tossed it over the back of a mahogany chair with black velvet cushions. “If I’d had the time and Sienna wasn’t with me, I would’ve finished the job. I managed to injure the other two.”

  “I’m sure that you did.”

  Nikolai knocked back the fiery liquor, swallowing the pleasant burn. “Sanguine furorem has made them strong. They must be feeding constantly to maintain such strength and speed. Volkov, the sergeant I spoke of, is a newly made vampire.”

  “And yet he outmatched you?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” A surge of satisfaction thrilled through him when Nikolai remembered dislocating both Volkov’s shoulders and hearing his knee crunch before throwing him into a stone wall a block away.

  “I had an opportunity to escape safely with Sienna. So I took it.” He glanced her way again. “I couldn’t risk one of them getting to her. Her safety was paramount.”

  “I see.” Friedrich set his empty tumbler on the mantel and paced closer to the chaise where Sienna slept on her side, her auburn waves partially covering her face.

  Instinctively, all of Nikolai’s muscles locked into place as Friedrich leaned over her. Nikolai’s fierce protectiveness of her was a primal urge, even when he knew the duke was a friend.

  “Should I summon a human healer?”

  “No,” snapped Nikolai. “She will be fine when she wakes.”

  Friedrich’s gaze swiveled to him. “Careful, friend. I mean her no harm.”

  Nikolai turned away and set his empty glass on a side table stacked with books. He sank into the wingback chair beside it with a sigh, the plush black leather squeaking as his weight settled. “I am her guardian for this mission. She is my charge.”

  Friedrich ambled closer, hands in his pants pockets as he leaned against the mantel again. “I’d say she’s much more to you than that. Did you know you just growled at me?”

  “What?” Nikolai hadn’t realized it at all.

  Friedrich’s gaze drifted back to Sienna. “Though I can certainly see the appeal. Lovely creature. If I am allowed to say so.”

  Nikolai ignored his jab. Friedrich was flirtatious and charming and bold. He couldn’t help himself. “She is…special.”

  “Of that, I am sure. Marius told me.”

  Unnerved that Marius should speak of her to Friedrich, he bristled at the thought. “What do you mean Marius told you? Told you what?”

  Friedrich smiled, which held more pity than true warmth. “If you’ll relax and not rip my head off, I’ll tell you.”

  Nikolai realized he’d gripped the arms of the leather chair, his fingers white-knuc
kled on the arms, his own claws itching to come out. His beast was riding him hard since the attack. Forcing himself to breathe evenly, he relaxed his shoulders and leaned back into the chair, waiting.

  Wearing his usual cavalier expression, even though Nikolai had been poised to attack him a moment before, Friedrich launched ahead. “In recent correspondence, Marius told me you would be coming with Sienna, the lovely woman who lives alone in Silvane Forest.” He paused and took a seat in the chair opposite Nikolai, made of the same fine black leather as the one where he sat but smaller in size. “He explained your mission and asked if I would be a safe haven should you need it.”

  Nikolai leaned forward again, this time out of curiosity to hear more not on an instinct to attack. Clasping his hands together with elbows on his knees, he said, “Yes. He told me you offered your home before I left Cutters Cove. We appreciate the risk you take with King Dominik so near.”

  Friedrich gave a nod and an easy smile. “If truth be known, I hate my Uncle Dominik. I’ve always hated him. Arrogant, ruthless bastard that he is. And from what Marius has told me, the crown has abandoned its own laws for selfish gain. I would never be a party to that.”

  “Good to hear. We need all the allies we can get,” said Nikolai, still wondering if Friedrich’s help had more to do with avenging his mother’s life and her death. But he’d never broach such a personal topic. He turned back to what had started the conversation. “You didn’t tell me what Marius said of Sienna.”

  Smiling as if he had a secret, Friedrich said, “He told me she was unique. That she was a friend of the enchanted Silvane Forest and all the creatures there. He said she carried some of its magic inside her.”

  Nikolai knew this to be true from the moment he met her months before. Her beauty had punched him in the gut, but the aura of magic that haloed her every step had lured him like a lost wolf to its den, seeking the comfort of home. Her healing touch, her giving heart, her comforting smile, her alluring beauty all spoke of potent magic, kept locked up tight just beneath her skin. But they also spoke of the essence of Sienna. She was beautiful in every way.