“Oh, Savitri,” he murmured. “You should have left when you had the opportunity.”
“I couldn’t.”
“It was not my doing.” He inhaled, and his lids half-lowered, as if in ecstasy. “This is physical. Your arousal.”
Her eyes widened.
So did his, and he laughed with dark amusement. “You did not realize. But you know desire, Savitri. I was not the first.”
Far from it. She looked down at her hands. They shook. Her breasts were heavy, her nipples tight and aching. Heat and moisture pooled between her legs. Her heart pounded.
It was her shields. She’d never been very good at listening to her body’s cues; she could easily pass through a day without recognizing hunger or exhaustion—and when she held her psychic shields up it became worse.
Sir Pup returned with the ball. Colin quickly took it from between the massive jaws, pivoted, and snapped his arm. The hellhound disappeared again.
“A variable removed,” he said. “Shall we conduct an experiment, Savitri? Discover at what point your shields fail?”
“No.” Her eyes held his. “I won’t let them.”
“But you feel it now.” He brushed his thumb back and forth across his bottom lip. “I have the same difficulty at times; the bloodlust is so overwhelming I do not realize I’m hard until I’m inside her.”
Her lips parted. She remembered all too well how that had felt: full, incredibly full. Surrounded by beauty, filled with it.
Now she seemed hollow, empty.
His smile faded, and the longing in his gaze reflected hers. “I know that, too. Your shields are strong, Savi, but your face is easy to read.” His fingertips brushed her cheekbone, a simple caress. “Invite me in. I can’t give you Caelum, but I can give you rapture. And we’ll both have what we want.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t trust you.”
She waited breathlessly for his angry response, but he remained silent. His hand drifted down; his thumb strummed over her pulse. Oh, god. She couldn’t hide its frantic beat. Did he think it was fear?
Unable to bear the tension, she looked up. “What are you doing?”
His gaze was cold, hungry. “Deciding if taking what I want is worth the losses it will incur.”
Hugh and Lilith. “They’d kill you if you do it against my will.”
“Yes. And so I must consider another option: earning your trust, so that you’ll open to me.”
Her mouth fell open in disbelief. “You want to be friends? At the same time announcing your ulterior motives? That your aim is not truly friendship, but to get into my head and my throat? Your methods are flawed, to say the least.”
“I enjoy your company. Do you not mine?” He phrased it as a question, but his tone said she must.
And she did, too much for sense. “When you aren’t being a complete ass.”
He laughed, and his eyes warmed. “I particularly enjoy that aspect of your company. We shall call it an experiment, to see if we can get along.” He removed his hand and shrugged carelessly. “And as Lilith mentioned you are soon to be married, I cannot, in good conscience, tie you to my bed and conduct multiple experiments on you in order to achieve my goals.”
Her breath caught. “But you could in bad conscience?”
“Exceedingly bad.” He looked down at his wrists and pulled on his shirt cuffs, the white edges in stark contrast to the dark jacket sleeves. He had beautiful hands, his fingers long and graceful. Genetics, but the power in them was still a mystery to her, their appearance concealing unnatural strength.
And now hers did, too.
“I assume it is an arranged marriage. Are you engaged?”
Was he bored by such topics, only asking out of politeness? His tone and his primping suggested it. She forced herself to look away from his hands, up to his face, and caught the sharp gleam of interest before he blinked.
She didn’t mistake the excited flutter in her stomach. Stupid, shallow lunatic. She should run. Friendship with him was madness. Dangerous.
But would it be dangerous? In Caelum, he had been under the influence of the realm’s surreal beauty and the extraordinary emotions it had created. They both had been. Whatever his motives now, he seemed determined not to alienate Lilith and Hugh. And whatever he thought he might get from her, nothing would come of it. She had her promise to keep.
“No,” she finally said. “I’m not engaged yet.”
He smiled lazily. “Then may I kiss you until you are? Just to taste now and again.”
She shook her head; not in denial, but to clear it.
“Do not fear, Savi; I’ll wait until you trust me a bit more. I’ll not take advantage of your confusion.”
She was not confused. This was very simple: He was a vampire, intent on drinking her blood for his pleasure. Who would use her with little concern for the damage he could inflict. Her indecision wasn’t because her head couldn’t figure that out, but because the rest of her was brainless. And because her arousal and curiosity were far too strong.
She could ignore the first and make certain that she was rarely alone with him—and perhaps friendship was a safe way to appease her curiosity. But was it worth the risk?
He offered his hand, accompanied it with a reassuring smile. “Shall I walk you home?”
Hesitantly, she placed her palm against his.
From the outside, the warehouse in Hunter’s Point appeared as decrepit as the rest of the neighborhood. Rust stained the metal siding and the roof boasted a haphazard mix of materials, as if it had been hastily and cheaply repaired too many times.
Colin winced as one of his tires jarred into a pothole, and prayed the buckling asphalt in the parking lot wouldn’t damage the Bentley’s undercarriage. Such an expensive nuisance, mechanics and maintenance. If Colin didn’t enjoy driving so much, he’d have hired a chauffeur years ago to take care of such things.
Castleford’s and Lilith’s motorcycles stood propped near the back entrance. Colin parked in the next space and deactivated the car alarm. It would not deter skilled thieves, and the warehouse had been soundproofed; the alarm could blare incessantly without anyone inside hearing it.
The entrance gave the first indication the warehouse was not all it appeared; Colin swiped his card and waited for the sound of the locks disengaging. The door had been constructed of reinforced steel, four inches thick.
Inside, a long undecorated corridor led him to the security desk. The white walls hid a myriad of sensors that read temperature and scanned for weapons. A defense system, too—venom-laced darts and gas canisters.
Jeeves sat behind a bulletproof glass shield and watched him approach.
A joke that Lilith aimed at him, Colin was certain. The Guardians undergoing training at the facility alternated shifts at the desk, but always took the same form: an elderly man, with the stiffest upper lip Colin had seen outside Windsor Castle. Castleford had claimed it was simply practice for the fledglings, disappearing into a role and maintaining a physical transformation—but Colin hadn’t missed the humor in the other man’s gaze when he’d given the explanation.
“Good afternoon, Jeeves. Do I pass?” Or not, as was better proof of his identity.
“I have been unable to attain a satisfactory reading, sir. Please enter a voice sample.”
Colin rolled his eyes and moved to a panel on the wall. A demon could easily mimic his voice, but it was one of the few methods of identification they could use with him. “Colin Ames-Beaumont, vampire and master of the sartorial arts. Do you adore my waistcoat, Jeeves?”
“It is positively smashing, sir. Please submit to a retinal and handprint scan.”
Colin’s brows rose. “I never have before. Why now?”
“Agent Milton has instituted a new policy, sir.”
He smiled, allowing the tips of his fangs to show. “What is the point, Jeeves?”
“Please submit, sir.”
His jaw clenched, but he stepped forward, slapped his hand a
gainst the panel, and stared ahead.
“Thank you, sir.”
A door to Colin’s left slid open. He glanced back at the old man. “Did anything register, Rebecca?”
“No, sir. But if a demon had been impersonating you, he would have shown up on the sensors. We are no longer to rely upon your not appearing in the initial scans in the corridor. How did you know? Did my blocks fail?”
“No. You are simply the only one I had not yet instructed in the difference between a waistcoat and an Ermenegildo Zegna creation.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how you intend to kill demons without knowing something of fashion.”
Jeeves’s thin lips pursed in a gesture unmistakably female. “Miss Murray is in the tech room, sir.”
“You are impertinent, Jeeves,” he said, but smiled as he swept through the door.
Savitri. It had been almost a week since they’d made their agreement to try friendship—it was madness to attempt it, yet completely enjoyable. Even the ache and frustration of her denials and impenetrable shields had some pleasure attached: it made her inevitable succumbing all the more sweet.
And he was determined it would not be simply a psychic yielding, but a physical one as well. Good God, psychic illusion or not, he’d tasted for the first time in two centuries. If, when she lowered her shields, he discovered that her psychic flavor still manifested a physical taste, Colin wouldn’t relinquish it. Her wedding would be no obstacle; her husband could never give her what Colin could, and most of the arranged marriages he’d known had seen the couples going elsewhere once the heir and the spare had been produced.
He’d not even have to wait that long; there was no possibility she’d have a child other than her husband’s if she was in Colin’s bed.
He almost shivered in anticipation of it.
But his smile and anticipation quickly faded; unfortunately, it was not Savi he was there to see.
Colin forced his eyelids open and swallowed against the sudden vertigo. The mirror pressed hard and cold beneath his knees and palms—he could feel it, but his vision told him he was suspended in the air, hundreds of feet above rivers of blood and molten rock. The smell assaulted him—rot and sulphur and the sickly sweet odor of burning flesh.
Like the wyrmwolves’ blood.
He fought against the nausea rising in his throat. God. He couldn’t bear this, he couldn’t—
Selah spoke, her tone warm and encouraging. Not afraid, as it had once been. “Colin, we need to see where they’re going. How they’re getting out. You must focus.”
Selah. He reached out but couldn’t find her hand. Try again. How many times had she tried to teleport them away and failed?
The ends of his fingers were stumps, but they didn’t bleed because he’d barely any blood left. That was good; she couldn’t leave with him because his blood was tainted. But when it was gone…
Feeding. Ripping and tearing. Strong enough to run if you feed—
Perspiration dripped into his eyes, blurring the scene below him. He wiped at it with his sleeve. He should have come in naked; his clothes stank.
He’d burn them. Like the bodies above him burned with the dragons’ breath and the creatures below burned in the rivers of lava and everything burned—
A body fell through the air next to him. Colin felt the rush of air and heat, saw the flash of iridescent scales, and steeled himself. It couldn’t touch him, but he didn’t want to add his shrieks to those above. The dragon swooped down, caught the body in its enormous jaws, and downed it with a single bite. A small, young dragon; Colin could have spanned the distance between its eyes with his arms.
It flew away with a single beat of its membranous wings.
“Colin?”
“Dragon,” he breathed in explanation, and glanced up.
Oh, good God. He shouldn’t have. The rotting bodies. The nosferatu wriggling between them like pale worms. Flying, their hands scraping over the icy black ceiling in a manner almost familiar—
For an instant, astonishment overwhelmed horror. “They’re writing. I can’t see what—only that they are.”
“The nosferatu?”
Colin felt the light psychic touch accompanying the question. Michael, with a request to look.
“Yes.” Colin let him in, felt the quick frustration before the Doyen withdrew.
“You’re too far from them,” the Doyen said. “I cannot read it.”
“The symbols?” Lilith asked.
“In all probability. They would remember those Lucifer used in the rituals last year.”
Colin let his chin fall against his chest. No use looking up—only down. A shifting, sliding mass raced across the obsidian rocks below.
Wyrmwolves. Running together, in a pack of thousands. Tens of thousands. Ripping and tearing pieces from each other, then regenerating to feed and be fed from again. The reek of their flesh and blood and fur rose on waves of heat.
“They wouldn’t know the meaning behind each,” Castleford said. “Or which ones combined to form an effective spell. Lucifer didn’t share that knowledge.”
“No, but the ritual was designed to allow them access to the Gates—”
Shut up. Colin clenched his teeth, gagging against the stench. He closed his eyes, fought to hold on to reality. Mirrors. Not Chaos.
Don’t leave me. Not here. Not alone.
Her voice faint beneath the screams, Lilith said flatly, “It’s impossible.”
And part of him left.
“It’s impossible,” Savitri said. Her eyebrows lifted, as if daring him to defy her. “A tessellation made of circles?”
Colin studied the arch, its cylindrical marble blocks, the lack of a keystone. Though no mortar had been used, the pattern interlocked as tightly as if it had been made of straight edges. It shouldn’t have been possible, and it should have fallen apart under its own weight—but it stood. Solidly, if her barefooted kick to the base had been any indication. “Apparently, sweet, it is possible.”
“Hugh says that with Guardians and demons, appearances are almost always deceiving. Apparently the same is true of their homes.” Thick ebony lashes framed her dark eyes, made the curiosity and humor lighting them seem all the brighter. Strange that he could not read deeply behind them. She either had naturally strong psychic shields, as did many humans who repressed large portions of their natures, or Castleford had taught her to block.
Given Castleford’s fondness for lecturing, Colin decided it was the latter.
“Our brains aren’t processing something correctly,” she said, turning to examine the arch again.
He preferred it when she looked at him. He’d noted that she was most likely to whenever he said something incredibly vain or affected. As he also preferred to make such statements, it was no hardship to draw her gaze.
“ Your brain may not be, young Savitri. You’d do well to forget all that Castleford has told you; I determined long ago that Guardian aphorisms are exceedingly tiresome, either certain to produce mental cavities with their cloyingly sweet virtue, or destined to rot one’s mind with boredom—particularly when one has heard them endlessly in one form or another for two centuries. Indeed, I stopped listening long ago, and you’ll note my intellect is rather formidable.”
“I’ve been taught to respect my elders, so I should let your blindness pass unremarked,” she said, glancing over her shoulder and drawing her upper lip between her teeth. It appeared ridiculously soft and moist when she released it. “But since you are two hundred years old and likely deaf as well, it can’t hurt to point out that your great age has obviously left you so mentally decrepit that you can’t see what’s in front of you. No wonder you pretended to be blind when we met; it was an outward manifestation of your inward deficiency.”
He was certain he saw well enough, but he shouldn’t have been looking. He batted his eyelashes together. “But don’t you agree I have aged well?”
“Apparently,” she said dryly. But her cheeks hollowed, as if she was biti
ng the insides to keep from laughing.
Then she took his hand, pulling him beneath the archway, almost skipping in her eagerness. He walked lightly along beside her, no longer suppressing the smile that had threatened during the whole of their conversation. She’d continually surprised him from the moment of his arrival in Caelum; he’d quickly discovered she was an extraordinarily intelligent creature, if also hopelessly naïve and trusting. She’d not shown fear when he’d flashed his fangs, nor when he’d told her to run. Instead she’d stared at him with her wide, curious gaze and asked if he was strong enough to open the doors of Michael’s temple.
Then she had offered him a sip of her blood in return for his feat.
Her questions had revealed she knew very well what a vampire was—even knew specifics about him that were different from others of his kind—yet she had risked being alone with him to experience the wonder of Caelum.
And he could think of no other companion he’d rather have shared it with. Not Lilith or Castleford—not even Ramsdell and Emily.
It was unsettling…but he could easily ascribe the foolishness of his reaction to Caelum.
He glanced down as her steps slowed and they entered a new courtyard. Her bare feet were silent on the creamy marble pavers. Now and again, her long, white linen skirt would flounce up, exposing her slim ankles and sleek calves, a flash of golden brown.
A white peasant shirt covered her arms and torso; the neckline sat at the points of her shoulders. Everything from her collarbones to the tips of her short hair lay open to his gaze.
Bloody hell, but it was such a pleasure to look; the sun brightened her skin, warmed the cinnamon tones until he thought he could smell the fragrance of her color beneath her natural, feminine scent.
He’d not taken the blood she’d offered, but as the hours passed in her company, his resistance began to wane. Not due to the bloodlust, which hadn’t risen yet but certainly would soon…he simply wanted more of her.
All of her.
Foolishness. She was Castleford’s sister, and he trusted Colin to look after her. After her grandmother, as well—and, indeed, both may have already passed into Colin’s protection, if Castleford’s insane plan to destroy the nosferatu with Colin’s blood hadn’t worked.
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