She had come for tattoos. Those new tats were vivid, red and raw, adding an overlay of color that contrasted greatly with her skin. She’d chosen wings. Dark blue, light blue and gray feathers with blood-red tips spanned from one of her shoulders to the other, expertly filled in. The result was spectacular.
Rhys stared intently at this incredible apparition.
Strands of her white hair—long, straight, shiny—cascaded over one of her shoulders to partially cover the right side of the tattoo. Both shoulders quaked slightly, not from cold, but as if the violence of the needles used to create the wings had affected her. Her emotional turmoil was discernible from where he stood.
Although she was aware of him, the graceful creature on that cot didn’t turn around. Maybe she waited for him to make the first move. Unfortunately, that move didn’t include any of the demands he had planned on using for getting to the root of who she was and what she was up to. What bubbled up from him instead was a show of sympathy.
“Bloody hell,” he whispered hoarsely. “What have you done?”
* * *
Pain sliced through Avery’s back as her muscles stabilized; pain reminiscent of another time, only infinitely tamer by comparison and much more civilized.
She didn’t have time to try out the feel of her surrogate wings or catch her breath. He was here in the doorway, his reflection clear in the mirror across from her. Him. Not just any Blood Knight, but the one she had secretly coveted from among the Seven. The Knight she wasn’t ever supposed to see in person, face-to-face, was less than five feet away, leaving her breathless.
There was no mistaking this creature for any normal mortal male. No chance in hell. His incredibly handsome, aquiline-featured face had Blood Knight chiseled all over it.
There was no use trying to play dumb, either, when they were both far from the classification of mortal and knew it.
“What have you done?” he asked again, the deepness of his voice sending shockwaves of familiarity through Avery.
His question seemed intimate, spoken as if he knew her well and cared about what she did, when neither of those things was true. He hadn’t known she existed until this moment. She had promised herself things would stay that way until she found the right time to change it.
Slowly, and without answering the impertinent query, Avery reached for her shirt.
“You’ve been hurt,” he said.
It was too late to ask how he had found her, and the answer wouldn’t have helped. Like often called to like, and she had gotten too close. But the effect his presence had on her was as unwelcome as he was. Icy shivers crept up the back of her neck. Her insides churned. Blood Knights had been designed to lure the eye and tempt the soul, and angels weren’t immune to those things because those seven Knights carried in their souls some beauty of the heavens.
Get out! Avery wanted to shout, studying his image in the mirror. I don’t have time for this.
As handsome as these Knights had been as mortal men, their famous features had been further enhanced by the grace of the renewed blood in their veins and the importance of their golden Quest. They were, however, ignorant of the fact that some of the immortal blood pulsing through all of them had been hers, unwillingly shared. And that, like a butterfly, she had been captured, ensnared in a net.
This magnificent Knight was muscled, honed, taut, elegant and rugged in equal measures. He stood well over six feet tall, his appearance formidable in every sense of the word. An aura of crackling power surrounded him, announcing that this was a man who had broken from his mortal bonds by stepping into another realm of existence.
He spoke again. “Are you all right?”
His throaty voice sounded like a sweep of crushed velvet, and affected her more than she’d care to let on. They were measuring each other, and she needed time to calculate what might happen next.
She had seen this Blood Knight many times in the past, and always with the same kind of gut-clenching reaction. Frozen in the body of a twenty-something-year-old, he had matured since his inception. His face was more chiseled than she remembered. Bright blue expressive eyes were alight with a worldly, intelligent gleam.
She knew those features well.
In that doorway, too close for comfort, stood the sun-kissed immortal with golden streaks of light in his mane of brown hair whose piercing gaze usually saw through shadows without seeing her.
Perceval had been his mortal name, way back in time. This was one of Arthur’s knights, a warrior champion who’d had a coveted seat at Camelot’s Round Table and been a major player in the Grail Quest. The intense heat of his observation began to melt her chills.
“What’s it to you?” she finally asked, slipping her shirt over her head. “I don’t believe you were invited to this party.”
Speaking calmly was a chore when this Knight’s allure bordered on the mystical. Of all the Seven, he had always been special to her. Her attraction to him had both excited and repelled her from the beginning, and from afar, further complicating the fulfillment of the personal vows she had taken.
Because of that, he was the most dangerous Knight of them all to have found her. She had to be careful, remain calm, when her heart was thrashing. More time was necessary before she turned to face him.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Who’s asking?” Avery returned.
The energy circling the room was expanding, pressing against the walls, humming in her ears. She was trapped, and therefore had to speak to him. No alternative presented itself when he filled the doorway.
She saw in the mirror that he was staring at her back and at the damp towel beside her.
“What’s wrong with your blood?” he asked.
“Nothing’s wrong with it.”
“It has no color at all.”
“What’s that to you?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it, or like you.”
“No,” Avery agreed, sliding her arms into her sleeves. “Other than your comment being incredibly rude, I’m sure you haven’t seen anything like me.”
Glossing over her feisty comeback, he tried again to engage her. “Where do you come from?”
She was fairly sure he didn’t mean the city or region of the world, but something deeper and having to do with her origins...as if she’d blow more of her cover and cough up her secrets because he asked her to.
Turning halfway around, she parried, “Is this an interrogation? Are you London’s supernatural sheriff?”
“Only an interested party.”
“Where I came from is none of your business.”
“Maybe it isn’t. What about your scars?”
“Rude again, and definitely not your concern.”
Persistence was another well-honed Blood Knight trait.
“Is there anything you can tell me about yourself that might help me to understand what you want here?” he asked in a lowered tone that caused Avery’s new tats to ache more than they already did.
“It’s late,” she said. “Maybe you have a job to do that doesn’t include wasting time in a tattoo parlor.”
“Not tonight. Everyone got a free pass in your honor.”
“Do you suppose the bad guys will thank me?”
Don’t let him in. Do not get close, Avery’s mind warned.
Remember who you are, and get away.
None of that was easy at the moment, however. She wasn’t just confronting a Blood Knight. She was confronting an old set of wishes long ago tamped down. This glorious creature had always made her want to forget her rage and her vows to keep clear of him and the others like him. The pressure she felt to fight her way out of the room was outrageous.
If she’d had her wings, the real ones, she could have bested this Knight in seconds. Although he was incredibly strong,
she would have been the strongest. Wingless, she was unwhole, halved, severed from the rest of her kind with her strength vastly diminished.
“Go away,” Avery managed to say.
“Answers first,” he said.
Pursuing their prey is what Blood Knights did best, and she was now at the top of that list.
Want to know who I am, Knight?
What if I tell you that your inner light was stolen from me, tortured out of my veins? What then? Would you thank me for your light and for your agile prowess? Someone should.
Stopping the internal chatter was imperative. She felt him tuning in to her. Hers wasn’t the only pulse skyrocketing. The rapid beat of his heart added to the tension in the air.
The truth was that in this guy’s voice, and in his golden presence, Avery heard the far-off rattle of the chains that had bound her to the Earth in his honor.
“You’re immortal, and yet have no sigils,” the magnificent bastard noted with a focus hotter than the artist’s needles.
Avery hated how he unsettled her.
“I suppose the saving grace is that the new designs look like they belong there,” he added. “Somehow, the wings suit you.”
Too damn personal...
Avery whirled around. The creature in the doorway had seen the wings, her new talismans, when she hadn’t had the chance. He had viewed her bare skin, scars and all. And now that she had lost some of her hard-won control, he had seen her face.
Would she let him get away with that? She had wiped minds for less. She had killed to remain anonymous in a crowded modern world. But none of those things was an option here with someone whose strength so closely matched hers at the moment. She had been sloppy and had not covered her tracks well enough. This meeting was her fault. There was no do-over, only escape.
She did not meet that heated gaze.
“Sigils are in these days. Didn’t you know?” she remarked, reaching for her jacket.
“Sigils.” He repeated the word. “Was that what you were looking for here, in a place like this?”
“Actually, that would have been useless, don’t you think, when you have to be born with those kinds of marks, or be born because of them?”
She was getting warmer, catching the fever that came with speaking about forbidden things. Her shoulders were on fire. Real wings would have taken her away from this confrontation. An inked span was nothing more than make-believe.
Still, the inked wings were an added reminder that if she stopped looking for the missing pieces of herself now, she would never know a moment’s peace. If she became distracted after all this time, and after believing she was closing in on the very thing she sought...all the years of searching and hating and destruction that had gotten her to this point wouldn’t be worth one single breath.
She wanted to look at him, but didn’t dare.
“I wonder if you’ll tell me what you are if I ask nicely enough?” he said. “And also who made you.”
“I’m afraid you have taken up far too much of my time already.” That remark actually sounded breathless. The airless room was stifling.
“Places to go? People to see?” he asked.
Avery ignored the remark. She was in need of fresh air and alone time, and he was in the way.
“I’m leaving.” She got to her feet, meeting his gaze at last.
He leaned against the doorjamb as if he had suddenly experienced a moment of weakness. But he rallied quickly. The devastatingly handsome head shook. Blue eyes burned bright.
“They will be waiting for you. London’s monsters,” he warned.
“They won’t find me.”
“I did.”
“You don’t understand...” Avery began, without finishing what she had been about to say. This Knight wasn’t to know anything about her quest. The Perceval of old had died, losing his mortal flesh, and had been resurrected by a golden kiss from a holy relic. After feeling Death’s black breath, his path had been clear. That had not been the case for her. And by the way, she wanted to shout, monsters no longer concern me.
“I’m trying to be polite, and you’re not making it easy,” he said. “What if I came here to welcome you to London, or to warn you about what lurks here?”
“Have you honestly come here for either of those things?” Avery challenged.
“No,” he confessed. “I came because I was intrigued by the sudden appearance of a stranger I couldn’t place.”
The tractor-beam of his blue-eyed scrutiny left Avery feeling as though she were still half naked. She also felt vulnerable when vulnerable wasn’t in her vocabulary and never had been. She’d been in battles this Blood Knight couldn’t even dream of, and had emerged unscathed. Damn straight she could handle this unexpected meeting.
“I owe you nothing, Blood Knight,” she said.
As she watched a smile play on the corners of his full, sensuous mouth, Avery realized she had just made a grave mistake. In letting him know that she knew him, and about him, she had trespassed on his purpose for existing. Blood Knight, she had said.
That mistake was the mother of them all, and any second now the ramifications of such a slip-up were going to bite her on her leather-clad ass.
Chapter 4
“So you do know me,” Rhys said, refusing to let her get past him.
The female, though of an unknown species, was extraordinarily beautiful. She had delicate features and wide-set blue eyes the exact color of a summer sky. Those eyes were the only real color she possessed, other than the tattoo, and stood out dramatically from the flawless paleness of her face. Adding more drama to her features was the way she had rimmed both eyes with black paint, which lent her a modern, edgy look. Not one scar marred that face.
“What if I do know about you?” she asked.
Rhys shook his head. “I wonder if it’s possible to get a straight answer out of you.”
“Unless you actually are London’s sheriff, I doubt it. Even if you were, it’s unlikely I would oblige.”
Rhys held up his hands in a gesture of submission. “Fine. I get it. You enjoy being mysterious.”
He stepped aside. “Would one more question be too much to ask?”
“Yes.” Donning her leather jacket, she got to her feet.
Up close, this trespasser wasn’t as small as he had originally thought. It was the slightness of her frame that made her seem fragile, though her attitude more than made up for it. He could easily have held her there with brute strength alone. Since he was two heads taller and twice as broad, she wouldn’t stand a chance against him. But this strange female was right. She owed him nothing. She had done nothing wrong. Yet.
“How do you know about me? Your answer might be more important than you realize, at least to me,” Rhys persisted. “Not many creatures are privy to knowledge of the Seven.”
She wasn’t going to get close to him, whether or not the doorway was wide open. Don’t you trust me, pale one? Maybe you don’t trust yourself. After all, not all immortals are friendly.
Hell...and again...other than his brethren and a few ancient vampires, he had never encountered another immortal, so what did he really know?
“Blood Knight, you said,” he prompted.
She said nothing.
“Perhaps you’ve met one of my brothers somewhere in this wide world?”
When her eyes met his briefly, the room seemed to fade out of focus. Those eyes were unusually intense and probing. Contained in the blue was the flicker of a far-off light.
A feeling of being connected to her snapped into place as their gazes held. Rhys was sure she felt it, too. Swaying slightly on her feet, the pale mystery was quick to break eye contact.
Rhys caught and held a breath, wanting...no, needing to know more about her. He said the next thing on h
is mind, shoving aside the answers he most needed in favor of the wave of emotion careening through him.
“Does it hurt?”
She looked up again.
“What you did tonight, here. Does it hurt?” he asked.
“It’s nothing.” Breathy voice. Lowered tone. Hidden emotion.
“And the other marks you bear?”
“Far worse.”
This beautiful female, parchment pale, slight of bone and freshly tattooed, had admitted to being privy to his status as an immortal. She had spoken of his brethren as if she were well-versed in their business, when he remained in the dark about hers.
The situation was unacceptable and there wasn’t really much he could do about it. She was intriguing, exciting. Unusual sensations stirred in his chest.
And there was something else...
Something about her that he could not put his finger on, no matter how hard he tried.
The scars that marred her flesh were evidence of battles she had fought. When? Where? They were evidence that she was no wallflower, no innocent maiden or pushover. In contrast to her fragile appearance, she was a warrior of some kind. A fighter.
Her gaze again rose slowly to meet his. This time she didn’t back off. She made no move to push past him. Rhys detected in her expression a glimmer of interest that she quickly masked.
Are you as intrigued by me as I am by you?
It was likely going to be a standoff in the doorway until she gave him more information about herself, especially now that she had let on about knowing his purpose in London.
“Why wings?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“Why not?” she returned.
“The tattoos must have been important for you to have come here,” Rhys suggested. “I noted your reticence in the doorway of the shop.”
“We’re talking in circles, Knight. Don’t presume to know anything about me. People usually come to a place like this to get their bodies inked. That’s what I did.”
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