by Lucy Lyons
“Well, you weren’t, just because I didn’t want to get you in hot water with your psycho, murderous cousin. But, yeah, if you can get away, you should be there.” I paused for a second before adding, “it wouldn’t hurt to keep you close in case everything goes south and the Venatores show up.”
She didn’t laugh that time, which meant she understood that I’d hold her personally and terminally responsible if she let us down. My clan needed Nick at his best, not weakened by the overlap between our minds. But, the Night Mother, it was rumored, had almost destroyed the earth with her hunger. I wanted the power, but not at the risk of waking her, if she was indeed still alive.
“I’ve still got to talk to the boss-man,” I reminded her. “but unless he says no, pack your bags, we’re going to Stonehenge for the summer solstice of the millennium.”
Chapter 4
I was desperate to learn everything I could about the Night Mother, but the vampires had tried to erase her from their history and language. There was no mention of her in any of the books in Nick’s expansive library, and I knew the Venatores too well to think Dominique would get away with taking books from the watcher library.
In the days since I’d talked Nick into taking our dog and pony show to the UK, I’d googled, hit the Seattle library, and attempted mirror magic to talk to my old history professor and fellow Venatores, Professor Eldritch, all to no avail.
I’d even considered talking to my newest mentor, Henny, who was a masterful earth witch and the bruja for the wolf pack that my friend Clay had just been initiated into.
Truthfully, I didn’t want to tell her about my suspicions, because I knew she’d immediately forward anything I said to her to the Alpha of her pack, a woman named Ashlynn, who’d gone from being a professional MMA fighter, to leading a pack of shifters and protecting them from being discovered by the humans they lived among.
Ashlynn and I had gotten off on the wrong foot when I accidentally showed her up in front of her pack and forced her into a truce with us because of my magic.
That I’d used magic was technically cheating. That she’d tried to start a war with me because she was insecure about her place as alpha of the pack, was technically, and literally, not my fault. But it left options for an ancient vampire history lesson limited.
A sharp rap on the open door to the training room made me jump, and my katana slipped out of my hands with a clatter that echoed off the stone walls.
“Nick, hey. I didn’t feel you coming. Usually, I’d say that was a good thing, in our present situation,” I half-joked, but my heart pounded like a wild thing trapped behind my ribcage.
“I didn’t mean to startle you. I was thinking about the Night Mother, and our impending trip across the Atlantic, and I wanted to talk to you about my concerns.”
“Of course. I was thinking about mine as you arrived, actually.” He smiled at me and electricity shimmered over my skin, raising gooseflesh even as it heated things low in my body.
“What were you thinking, Love?” He gestured me to take a seat on a low bench against the wall and sat next to me with his legs stretched out in front of him. He hooked his ankles and leaned back with his hands behind his head, waiting for me to answer, and I giggled at him.
“It looks stranger to see you in a human relaxed pose, then it does when you’re crouched for the hunt,” I confessed, and he chuckled and peered at me sideways out of one eye.
“You want to go to Rome and wrangle your way into the Vatican library for information on the queen of vampires, and you think the strangest thing is how I’m sitting?” I flinched and bumped him with my shoulder.
“Quit peeking into my head before I tell you stuff, or Valentine’s Day is going to get real boring, real quick,” I complained. I was only half serious, but keeping excitement in an eternal relationship was, in reality, one of my biggest fears as we planned our wedding.
He tugged me into his lap with a jerk and ran the tip of his nose down my neck.
“You will always surprise me, Caroline, because even as well as I know your convictions, I can never tell what they’re going to incite you to do.”
“Well, the Vatican may seem risky for me, but I need to know the truth about the Night Mother, before I try to siphon off her magic with a thousand humans nearby. I don’t want to jumpstart the apocalypse you know.”
“I do know, and that is why I took the liberty of getting in touch with a friend of yours, who is landing several hours, with the information you were looking for. I talked to Clay, but I’d feel more comfortable if you were with the wolves who will be meeting the museum shipment and diverting Dr. Eldritch to our humble home for a few precious hours.”
“The professor is coming to town?” I squeaked, throwing my arms around his neck. “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you did that! Wait. How did you do that?” I babbled, and he sighed, waiting for me to finish before continuing.
“The Seattle Museum of Natural History was already receiving a selection of pieces on loan from the Vatican for a limited time. The professor managed to sneak out some sort of written record of how the Night Mother was sealed away, and we just have to kidnap him for a couple of hours to get our hands on it. Hunters will be accompanying him, so he couldn’t come of his free will.”
“Sheesh,” I huffed, still smiling at him. “I’d almost written off the whole idea, because I could figure out how to get in, but not how to survive getting out again.”
“My way is easier,” he gloated.
“Your way had luck on its side, as usual,” I countered. It did seem that Nick had an inordinate abundance of luck in his life, but mostly I was still waiting for some of it to rub off on me.
With the professor returning from Italy, and the need for us to coordinate with not only Clay and the werewolves, but Simi and Dominique on the Venatores side, I suddenly felt rushed and nervous.
“How many hours is ‘several’?” I asked, already ticking off the weapons I’d need to gather and reconnaissance I’d need to do of the airport to get Eldritch from his keepers. “Wait. Once we take him, how will he ever go back? Dom squeezed in on the back of a high-profile master vampire kill. I’m not planning on sacrificing a few of our people to make him look good to the Venatores.”
“Apparently, the professor is looking to retire to a life in the woods, studying nature,” Nick replied, and I restrained myself from kicking my feet in glee.
Henny, my teacher and the witch for the wolves, was the professor’s estranged wife. I knew they missed one another, mostly because they had a better relationship apart than most people had when they were together.
But I’d never thought he’d be willing to give up his old life. Give up teaching the young Venatores, sure. But his library? That was when I knew he meant to get this wife back no matter what.
I kissed him quickly on the cheek and tried to slide off his lap, but Nick held me until I turned back and kissed him properly. He lifted me up and I slid on leg over so I was straddling him, and bent my mouth to his as he fisted one hand in my hair, and wrapped the other behind me, cupping my butt and pulling me against him.
There was a trick to not getting snagged on those vicious fangs of his as I tasted him, but we’d practiced enough that I was getting the hang of it. Even when he grew aroused and his fangs drew down to their full, most dangerous length, our lips and tongues managed to tangle and soon I was making little helpless sounds of need as I felt him, hard from the fangs down, our clothes the only barrier between us.
When he finally nicked my tongue, the taste of my blood in our mouths didn’t slow us down at all. Instead, I found myself on my back on the training mat, straining backward to see if the doors were at least closed, if not locked.
“Oh. Hey, Rachel, Fin. How’s it going?” I panted as Nick went as still as only the undead can. “Hi, Clay,” I added with a weak laugh. “Fancy seeing you here.”
There was a deep chuckle from one of the men, and Rachel pinched the bridge of her nose.
> “Right now, I’m just grateful you lifted the ban on the vampires pairing off,” she quipped, and Nick sighed.
“Again. I’m sorry. I was wrong to ban the pleasures of the flesh from my vampires. I didn’t mean to let it go on so long without holding council and defining what that should mean.”
After my close encounter of the necromantic kind with Colette, Nick had quickly amended the ban, simply stating that no other vampires could pair off with humans. Rachel had just as quickly outed herself as a ‘close friend’ of Fin’s, which had thrown me for a loop at first. Fin was twenty-something, and Rachel was almost one hundred. Once I thought about it, it made perfect sense. Two soldiers in their master’s army, both leaders of their people. Frankly, it was a better match than I would’ve made for either of them.
We’d had a few hours of what I’d assumed had to be the biggest orgy party ever, which Nick thankfully saved me from by taking me out until he felt the hunger abate from his people.
Colette delighted in telling me the gory details, but I was happy not to have seen it firsthand. The next night, we were business as usual, with a few stragglers hiding in their quarters, but most of our people happy to be back to work without the gnawing skin-hunger eating them up inside.
That just left Clay to find a special friend for, but he seemed bound and determined to resist every beautiful face I stuck in front of him. One problem at a time, I thought, and Nick glanced over at me as he pressed against my mind.
It will be difficult to find him someone, when he’s in love with you, he reminded me silently, and I gently pushed him out of my head and shut my mind to him. Clay didn’t love me the way Nick was suggesting, but our closeness had made it easy for him to put my safety and happiness before his own. Except, I was happy, and I was probably as safe as I was ever going to be in a world where the law was kill or be killed.
“We’re getting married in England!” I squealed. I wriggled out from under Nick, who still straddled me as though finding us in that position was normal…While it was becoming far too frequent, I refused to believe that I was the only uncomfortable person in the room. I jumped to my feet and brushed at the nonexistent dirt on my clothes.
“What if the professor brings information that suggests it’s too dangerous?” Nick pointed out, and I curled my lip at him.
“It’s not a deal breaker. It would just mean I definitely need Henny or Dom to come with me to get around any issues that might arise.” I looked at each of them in turn. “I know this is the right thing to do. I feel it. Can’t all of you?” Only a handful of times in my life had I said something and knew in that moment I was changing the course of my history, and possibly the world’s.
As I spoke, the air changed. I caught the scent of night blooming jasmine and the musk of wild animals before the room spun and I felt Nick’s arms around me, holding me tight.
“Well, I felt that all right,” Clay quipped, rubbing his hands down his arms. “I guess whatever just happened means that we’ve already passed the point of no return, huh?” I’d forgotten that once upon a time I’d suspected that Clay had latent psychic ability. Somehow, I supposed the werewolf in him erased the other. I was happy to see it hadn’t.
“No, that is most certainly not what that means, Clayton,” Nick broke in. “What you just felt, was the Night Mother stirring. She feels the necromancy in our midst and is calling out to it.” He released me but held me by one arm as he stared at me thoughtfully. “We must be vigilant in ensuring that we aren’t simply flies being led to the sticky strands of the Night Mother’s web.”
I shuddered and shook him off. I’d dreamed of her lair, and I knew that in some plane, she had to be aware of me too. But I had no intention of letting her power fall into the wrong hands, even if that meant I was the one who couldn’t use it.
“Back to business, guys. Professor Eldritch is putting himself in danger, and I’m going to go out on a limb and guess it’s too late to ask for take backs,” Fin offered. I caught myself chewing my lip and switched to the end of my thumbnail instead.
“That’s for sure,” Nick agreed with him. We’ve got to get Eldritch here safely, which means we still need the rats and whatever wolves are willing to help us. I felt his irritation even through my shielding and knew it was my fault, even though he’d never admit it in front of the others.
I was the one who’d failed to raise my personal magic enough to protect his identity. Then, to top it off, I still couldn’t close a deal with the wolves. I’d get her assurances, then she’d back out and demand more from the vampires than I had the authority to give.
Then again, it was also me who had first felt the Queen stir in her sleep when Nick and the grandmaster Caius had fought. Her power had joined with ours for the briefest moment and it had been the difference between life and death for our clan. I wanted to feel that one more time. Stonehenge was the birth of witchcraft, the place where druidic religion had evolved from rituals performed in the name of minor gods, to the power to change reality.
But the Night Mother had been locked away a millennium before the Celts had formed religion out of superstition. I was desperate to look at the history that the professor brought with him. Especially if I could prove what I had long suspected. That vampires were descendants of the fey, and that all witchcraft came from the same place. I could prove that being a vampire was just like any other form of wild fairy magic. That my husband-to-be was magical in the same way that any other fairy or fey kin were, not demonic or of the devil.
I’d learned about the treatises and laws that humans and vampires had once written together, hundreds of years before I was born from the Venatores library when I was a watcher. I’d left the hunters in the name of everlasting love before I could even make a dent in the mountains of tomes that explained vampire history from a human perspective, and I was itching to get my hands on whatever the professor was bringing us.
It was like Christmas Eve, and my stomach was full of fluttering butterfly wings at the prospect of learning something, anything that would prove to the world that Nick was the king that I saw him as, not the monster that modern human text painted him to be. The Night Mother, whatever else she was, could be the answer to my questions, as to where Nick and his kind came from.
Chapter 5
Clay worked his magic, and Ashlynn agreed to meet with us upstairs in the bar. As much as she loved the boost to her power base from my psychic connection to some of her wolves, she’d sworn her allegiance to Nick and almost immediately rescinded the same. While I understood her need to protect her own people first, my inability to bring the wolves into the fold was a bone of contention between Nick and me.
I had an hour to kill before she arrived, and I knew just how I wanted to spend it. However, a hot bath with bubbles and a master vampire washing my back just wasn’t in the cards, so I settled for a quick, hot shower and a coffee from the oversized mug Rachel had given me as a welcome home gift when I moved into the club. It held almost twenty ounces of caffeine heaven and said, “I drink the coffee and then I do the things” on the outside. I loved it almost as much as I loved Rachel for knowing me as well as she did.
The espresso machine was a new addition too, a concession made on my behalf by Nick, who rolled his eyes and teased me about being a “weak human” who needed drugs to stay awake at all hours of the night. He’d stopped when I reminded him that he’d have a lot more fun ‘going all night’ if he shut up and let me have my damned coffee.
The coffee was set to brew extra hot because it usually took me so long to remember I’d made it, and the pleasant sting of the cup warmed my hands all the way up to the wrists. The sensation mimicked the feeling of my magic when it gathered in my palms before I released it, and I reveled in the power and heat that mingled in me.
I gathered the heat up like I did with my magic, and when I sipped from the mug, the coffee had cooled to a lukewarm that was difficult to swallow. I pushed the heat back into the mug, and the tingling feeling
returned to my hands. The mug was steaming again, and when I drank from it, I scaled my tongue. Cursing under my breath, I set the mug down. I felt Nick’s presence a second before the scent of his cologne and breath mints filled my nostrils.
“Going to meet up with Ashlynn in a few minutes. Did you want to be there?” I offered, but I knew he wouldn’t take me up on it. Nick, like most of his kind, couldn’t be out in the sunlight without instant burning injury that could result in death in minutes. While they were perfectly capable of being alive and awake during the day, Nick preferred to keep at least a few feet of dirt between him and daylight. The pack had more than proven that they belonged in the compound, but Ashlynn didn’t have Nick’s trust, and I stood by his decision.
It didn’t hurt that I really wasn’t fond of her. She liked physically beating me up which she could do any hour of any day. She also loved harassing me, and she was mean to Clay whenever I was around the pack. In fact, the more I thought about it, the less I liked having to ask her permission to involve the wolves.
“You think I made a mistake, treating the wolves as autonomous equals, don’t you? I feel it every time you see one of the security guys, or Clay comes around.”
“I understand what you’re trying to accomplish, Caroline. I just wish the alpha wolf wasn’t such a…”
“You’re trying not to say ‘bitch’, aren’t you?” I giggled and he scoffed, shaking his head.
“Unfortunately, anything else I could come up with, was less gentlemanly,” he confessed.