She reached his feet and froze. Her glamour lifted against her will and she realised her mistake.
The grey ash on the scuffed black stage floor had slipped her notice. She had been too focused on him.
Foolish.
The circle of ash glowed and fire burned through her bones. She shrieked and Andreu dropped his book, instantly sitting up, his fangs on show and his eyes crimson.
“Son of a bitch.” She pushed the words out and collapsed to her knees with a jolting thud as another wave of pain rocked her, intensifying the flames in her bones until she felt they would incinerate her and turn her to ashes similar to those that caged her.
His eyes went wide, horror filling them. She didn’t believe their lie. He had sought to hurt her and he had succeeded. The ash surrounding her glowed brighter and she cried out again, squeezing her eyes shut against the agony that lanced her. Her skin prickled and heated. Her stomach twisted, feeling as though someone had punched her, and she doubled over, clutching it. She had to break the circle.
It took tremendous effort to peel one hand away from her stomach. It slid limply down her thigh and hit the black wooden stage palm up. Her fingers shook, limb so heavy that she could barely move it. She drew sharp deep breaths and clenched her molars together, fighting the pain threatening to render her unconscious. Had to break the circle. She slowly opened her eyes, flipped her hand palm down and crept forwards with her fingertips across the scuffed floor, using her short nails to claw her way towards the ash. Her vision swam and her stomach heaved. Her heart became a throbbing beat in her chest and darkness encroached at the very edges of her mind but she forced herself to keep going. She would not submit. She would bear the agony to regain her freedom. Her fingers were so close now.
A white-hot ring snapped around her neck.
Varya arched backwards and screamed until she ran out of breath and her throat burned. She snarled and hissed, writhing as she clawed at the collar.
“No. No.” She forced her fingers into the tiny gap between her skin and the metal and pulled on it. The metal burned her fingers and cut into the back of her neck but it didn’t stop her. “No. Get it off me. No!”
Andreu shifted to the edge of the seat, his eyes blue now and impossibly wide. His gaze flickered between her and whoever stood behind her. She hissed and pulled on the collar, the blood making her fingers slip off the metal. The ash around her continued to glow, fierce and vicious, mocking her and draining her strength. She would never escape this circle.
She stared at Andreu and tears burned her eyes. How could he have betrayed her? She had given her name to him and had healed his pain, and he had repaid her with this?
She screwed her face up and kept clawing at the collar, the smell of her blood and blistering skin not deterring her.
“Stop it.” Andreu shook his head, his blue eyes imploring her to do as he ordered. “You are hurting yourself.”
Varya wanted to laugh at him but she didn’t have the energy. Her bones throbbed, limbs like lead as her burst of adrenaline faded, leaving her weaker than before. She kept trying, determined to prise the collar off her before it was too late, but her arms felt so heavy and her fingers were too weak to grasp the infernal ring that held her neck. She barely managed to keep them hooked over the top edge.
Andreu stood. “I said to stop it! You are bleeding.”
Varya growled at him, hot tears streaming down her cheeks, and her head spun. The world went dark and blinked back into horrible vivid life, the pain returning with it. She curled up on her side on the stage, fingers still clutching the collar, and sobbed.
“What did you do to her?” Andreu said, his voice distorted in her ears.
She stared up at him through her tears, too weak to do anything else, waiting for her precious life to end.
She shouldn’t have come back to him.
She should have known it would end like this.
Andreu crouched at the edge of the circle, his elbows resting on his thighs, and looked at her. Varya stared at him, contempt cutting through the pain that racked her. Her tears dried against her skin. He looked so sorry. Liar. An actor of his skill belonged on this godsforsaken stage.
“Bastard,” she hissed and closed her eyes, not wanting to see him any longer. The pain of his betrayal eclipsed that caused by the ash and the collar. It even surpassed the agony of losing her freedom.
She should have known better than to trust him.
“You never said you would harm her,” Andreu snarled, his deep accented voice loud in the theatre.
For a man who had threatened to kill her, he was certainly singing a different tune now. She opened her eyes and his immediately dropped to meet hers. The concern in them seemed genuine and not an act. Where was the warrior who had looked ready to do battle with her so many times?
Varya pulled at the collar, miserable and tired.
“Is it hurting you?” he said and she nodded. He looked beyond her. “Take it off her.”
“No.” Came the stern reply. His master’s voice. She should have known.
Andreu growled. “Fine, I will take it off her.”
He ignored the answering snarl and leaned over her, his bare feet scuffing and breaking the ash circle as he moved closer. She closed her eyes as he reached behind her and unlocked the collar. The pain disappeared but that was all. She almost felt sorry for him as he sat back on his haunches and frowned at her throat. The infernal silver collar hung from his right hand but it had already done its job.
Andreu knelt before her and swept his fingers over her throat. She shied away, not wanting him to see the marks on her skin, fae words that would never disappear. He had thought to free her by removing the collar but it was too late. She was bound.
Enslaved.
Because of him.
Varya wanted to attack him and then the other vampire, and any who dared to come near to her, but she was too weak to move.
She settled for glaring at Andreu.
He stroked the marks on her throat and she felt them pulse and shift. His blue eyes darkened and flares of red appeared in his dark aura. The fae writing on her throat would be giving her emotions away, shining in colours of her desire, as red as the sparks that showed in his aura. A silent response to her own passion.
“What is this?” he said.
Varya stared into his eyes, afraid but unable to lie to him. He might as well know everything now. It wasn’t as though she could ever escape him again.
“I was foolish enough to get myself caught,” she whispered and tears filled her eyes, making Andreu shimmer in her vision.
“Why?”
She blinked and the tears streamed across her nose and down her cheeks. “Because I wanted you. You fascinated me and I wanted you… not the incubus.”
“Incubus?” Andreu said with a note of incredulity lacing his Spanish accent. “I thought you were a succubus.”
“I am.”
“You said incubus.”
She knew she wasn’t making much sense. Her head swam from everything spinning around it and she couldn’t think straight. Two separate trains had collided in her head and the words had come out jumbled, a mixture of a confession of the desire she felt for Andreu and a warning to keep the bastard at bay so he didn’t see her like this—weak and vulnerable. Now Andreu was looking at her as though she had gone insane.
Varya nodded. “Not me. Him. The other. I don’t want him near me. Please?”
Antoine came around from behind her and glared down at her, his icy eyes ringed with crimson. “There is another of your kind here?”
She had thought he of all people would know. She nodded again. “He wears the fae markings.”
Antoine’s pale blue eyes shot wide. “Payne? He is a vampire.”
“Not all vampire.” Varya tried to push herself up but found she didn’t have the strength. Andreu’s strong hands claimed her shoulders and gently helped her, raising her into a sitting position and holding her until she was s
teady. “I thought he was all fae… that he had found a good place to feed… but then I saw him… realised he is only part incubus.”
Neither of them looked as though they believed her. She raised a shaky hand to her throat and felt the pronounced bumps of the ink there. She wanted to cry again but held back her tears. It was her fault that she was in this mess and she had to deal with the consequences and the pain.
She had thought she could trust him.
Now she was chained to someone.
And it wasn’t Andreu.
Her foolish behaviour had cost her freedom.
Not only that but he had her name.
Could her life get any worse?
* * *
CHAPTER 7
Andreu exhaled a soft curse as Payne entered through the doors at the back of the theatre, and moved closer to Varya, consumed by an overwhelming need to protect her. Varya feared Payne. It had been there in her eyes when she had asked Andreu to keep Payne away. If Varya was right and he was part incubus, it would explain his strange behaviour where she was concerned and his knowledge of her kind.
“Where did you go?” Antoine’s voice echoed around the height of the empty theatre. “I told you not to leave the building.”
“And I told you I would have no part in this.” Payne’s retort was little more than a dark growl. He stalked down the aisle, gaze set on Antoine, blacker than midnight. It didn’t move from him even when Snow and Javier entered from the side doors.
When it did eventually leave the aristocrat male, it came to rest on Varya, widened, and then blazed red.
“What did you do to her?” Payne flew onto the stage in a fit of white-hot rage and grabbed Antoine by the collar of his silver shirt. He lifted Antoine off his feet, growling into his face, fangs bared. Bright sparks of blue and gold flashed in Payne’s red eyes and the elaborate markings on his thick forearms changed colour, darkening to shades of deep forest green and fathomless blue, then to obsidian and crimson.
“Think twice before going through with whatever dumb idea is racing through that thick head of yours, Payne.” Snow appeared next to Payne, his claws pressed against the elite vampire’s neck and his tone deceptively calm and cool.
Payne’s eyes slid to him and he set Antoine back down on his feet.
Snow turned his diamond gaze on his younger brother. “I also wish to know what you have done to this female.”
Antoine backed away from Payne and Snow, and straightened his shirt.
Payne crouched next to Varya, causing her to shuffle backwards towards Andreu, and hissed a ripe curse before turning to look up at Antoine. “Did you know what you were doing when you placed that goddamned collar on her?”
“Stopping her from leaving so we could question her, as the fae I contacted said that it would.”
“Well, you certainly stopped her from leaving,” Payne muttered and went to touch the marks but Varya hissed at him, baring her small fangs. Andreu placed his right arm between them, shielding her and ready to pull her against him if Payne tried anything. Payne withdrew his hand and his frown hardened. “You might have wanted to look into it a little first.”
Andreu’s blood turned to ice. He looked down at Varya and she turned her face away.
“What is it?” he said but she didn’t answer. He looked to Payne instead.
Payne’s lips compressed into a grim line. “She is bound to whoever is at the other end of the spell. Under normal circumstances, it would not be so bad. She would be free to come and go by order of her master and could live a relatively normal life.”
“But these aren’t normal circumstances.” Andreu could read between the lines. He turned on Antoine. “What is she bound to?”
Antoine backed off another step. “The theatre.”
Andreu flew at him, claws ready to strike, not caring that the aristocrat vampire would easily defeat him. He had lied to him, had led him to believe that Varya wouldn’t be harmed and he just had to speak to her once she was inside the circle. Now she was trapped inside the theatre. Antoine had taken her freedom from her.
No, he had taken it. He had agreed to go along with the plan even though he had known that Antoine hadn’t told him the whole of it. He had wanted her to come to him so he could convince her to behave herself and get himself another taste of her at the same time.
He launched his fist at Antoine.
Javier caught it and twisted Andreu’s arm behind his back, restraining him.
“Calm down,” Javier snarled in his ear, voice rough as Andreu struggled in his grasp. Andreu’s shoulder twisted, threatening to pop out of its socket, but that and the pain didn’t stop him. He would make Antoine pay for what he had done to Varya.
Andreu growled and then roared, arching forwards in an attempt to break Javier’s hold on his arm.
Snow appeared between him and Antoine, a formidable wall of muscle and sharp red eyes that dared him to attempt to touch his brother. He had no desire to take on Snow, knew that if he tried it wouldn’t even come to a fight. Snow would cleave Andreu’s head from his body before he could even touch him.
Andreu relented and relaxed so his brother would loosen his hold.
Javier held him for a few long seconds more during which only the sound of Andreu’s own heavy breathing filled his ears and then released him. Javier stepped around him and the soft look in his brother’s brown eyes stripped Andreu’s strength.
“She can’t leave the theatre, Javier. Even you know that isn’t right. Antoine has taken her freedom from her.” Andreu glanced down at her, overcome with sorrow for her and guilt for his part in what had happened, and then across at Payne. “There is no way to break it?”
Payne shook his head.
“How do you know?” Javier said.
“He has a little fairy dust in his veins.” Snow was the one to answer, revealing that while the rest of them had been oblivious to Payne’s true lineage, nothing slipped past the ancient vampire.
Payne shot him a glare. Snow shrugged off the threat and came around Andreu. He hunkered down next to Varya and stared at her, eyes narrowed in curiosity. Andreu clenched his fists at his sides, battling the dark need that loomed up inside him. He wanted to move between her and Snow. He didn’t want to allow the vampire near her. She had suffered enough already and he wouldn’t allow anything more to happen to her.
Andreu frowned at his feelings and then shoved them away. No romantic entanglements. He had set that rule for himself and he was going to stick to it.
No matter how tempting and beautiful Varya was.
Her pale head lifted and her eyes met his, luminous and bright, the colours in them shining and sending a jolt right through him. His lips parted and his fingers relaxed. Devil, she was beautiful, and tempting.
“Do you think there is a loophole, female?” Snow said and she was still for close to a full minute and then moved her gaze to him and nodded.
“There may be.” She sounded weaker now than she had done a few minutes ago and she wavered as she sat in the middle of the broken ash circle. Was something wrong with her?
Payne scrubbed a hand over the paler spikes of his dirty blond hair. “It is possible. A building is not able to issue commands and it is not made of flesh and blood. The owner of the building may be seen as her owner too.”
Even Andreu knew it was a long shot. His gaze slid to Antoine and narrowed, his fury boiling just below the surface.
Antoine glared right back at him and spoke through his extended fangs. “I swear to you, I did not know. The damned fae will pay for this.”
“Do not.” Payne shook his head. “A vampire war with the fae would expose us all and endanger the humans. I will speak with the man you met and ask if there were loopholes woven into the spell. A fae would likely do such a thing. They all hate captivity and a vampire asking for a collar for a fae… something tells me he would have ensured she could escape the bond somehow.”
Andreu thanked him with a nod.
Pay
ne knelt on one knee beside her and reached out to her. She didn’t flinch away from his touch or hiss at him this time. He brushed the short lengths of her black hair from her tear-streaked face, sorrow in his dark eyes. She had said that she had come here, drawn by Payne, but that she didn’t find the man fascinating. She wanted Andreu instead.
Andreu wanted her too but it didn’t change a thing. He had a plan and had spent the past few decades putting everything in place to make his dream happen. He couldn’t waver now that he was so close.
“I will find a way to fix this,” Payne said and she nodded and managed a smile.
Jealousy coiled in Andreu’s stomach but he ignored it.
It was guilt. Not jealousy. He was just feeling sorry for her because he had played a part in chaining her to this theatre, something he never wanted for himself. He had tricked her and stolen her freedom.
“Someone must look after the woman until Payne finds a way to undo it,” Antoine said and Andreu’s gaze roamed back to him. “She is your responsibility.”
Andreu frowned. “For how long? What if we never find a way to fix it? You did this to her. She should be your responsibility.”
Varya’s eyes bore into him. No romantic entanglements. If he spent more than a few hours with her, he would surely break that rule. She was too tempting. Too beautiful.
Andreu ignored her and continued, “I will look after her today but find a fix for this. I am not going to spend the rest of my years stuck here babysitting a fae. No way.”
Varya hissed and disappeared.
Snow huffed and stood, towering over Andreu and making him feel small, and not just physically. “You hurt her feelings.”
The way Snow looked at him with sharp red eyes as he said that gave Andreu the distinct impression that he was considering hurting him as payment for what he had done.
Andreu edged away from him.
Snow was right. He hadn’t meant to hurt her but the thought of being saddled with the woman for however long it took Payne to find a way to break the spell had set him on edge. Andreu knew himself, and he knew that deep inside he was the same as Javier. If he spent time with Varya, no matter how hard he tried to keep it purely physical, he would be in danger of developing feelings for her.
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