Four Dukes and a Devil

by Cathy Maxwell

  There wasn’t, of course. All he could do to show his appreciation was to make the last chapter of his life as easy on her as possible. So few things were still within his control, but he could meet his end like a man. No whining or any of that bullshit. Plenty of people died before their time. Because of the demon in him, Blake had been responsible for some of those untimely deaths, in fact. Fair didn’t count for a damn thing when it came to life—why should he cry about not getting fairness in death?

  “I’m ready,” Elise said, holding open the sliding door.

  Blake stood. “So am I.” And I’ll prove that, Elise, when the time comes.

  Chapter Ten

  Elise picked at her plate, eating a few bites just to look normal to the other humans in the dining car. Blake had been intrigued that she could eat at all.

  She was silent throughout most of dinner, struggling to think up something to say and failing. Blake didn’t seem to expect her to chat, either. Elise felt frustrated. Couldn’t she even make small talk to ease his evening? Was she so out of practice with how to act in a social setting that she’d been stricken mute? She was a vampire; she could lift the train car and carry it if she had a mind to! Yet she couldn’t come up with a way to start a single, pleasant conversation. How humbling.

  “Things have been quiet for almost twenty-four hours,” Blake said.

  Shame stung her, forcing out a blur of words. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m not very good at conversations. For years, I hardly talked to anyone aside from Mencheres, and he knows me so well, few words are needed. I would like to speak with you, Blake, but I find it extremely difficult coming up with the proper words to say.”

  He stared at her, his mouth quirking. “I meant the demon had been quiet for almost twenty-four hours, but…you want to talk to me?”

  If Elise had still had blood pressure, she’d have blushed. Of course Blake had been referring to the demon. She was the only one focused on herself, narcissistic fool that she was.

  “Never mind,” she murmured.

  Blake’s hand slid across the table, touching her arm. “I’d like to talk to you, too,” he said. That little quirk to his mouth faded, making his face very serious. “If that’s all right.”

  His fingers were warm. Blake wore a white button-down shirt, the neck open, showing off his beautifully sculpted throat and collarbones. Black pants fit him well, emphasizing not only his leanness but also the strength in his legs.

  Elise downed her water in a gulp. This was bad. She hadn’t felt this way about a man since—well. And that had ended horribly, too.

  “Elise?” Blake was still staring at her. “Is that all right?”

  No. Because if I don’t pull back now, if I don’t distance myself from you this moment , I’m going to hurt like I haven’t hurt in decades. My coldness and apathy are all that can save me.

  But just as Blake was helpless over the fate that brought him ever closer to the salt flats and the end of his life, neither could Elise bring herself to turn her back on him. Some things had to be done, no matter their cost.

  “I’d love to talk to you,” she said. “Let’s go back to the cabin.”

  Mencheres wasn’t in the cabin when Blake entered it. Elise didn’t seem concerned about his absence, however, so Blake didn’t question it. Maybe the vampire was getting some overdue sleep. Or finding his own dinner.

  “Here.” Blake gestured to the bench across from him. “It’s comfortable, if you have a good imagination.”

  She smiled, showing pretty white teeth without that curve of fang he knew lurked in her mouth. Even though her hair was still damp, and she didn’t wear a speck of makeup, Elise’s beauty was obvious. She seemed unmindful of the looks she garnered, though. Hell, Blake had thought the train porter was about to ask her out when he dropped off the check.

  Was it real? he wondered. The movies hadn’t been right about much concerning vampires thus far, but what if Elise’s looks were some sort of illusion? A predator’s mirage in order to lure her prey closer?

  “Is that your real face? Or do you look…” Blake paused, trying to choose an inoffensive word, “different?”

  She frowned. “I look different when I shed my human disguise, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Yes, that.” So he’d been right about the glamour. What was under it? “Can I see you? The real you?”

  Elise’s blue eyes began to swirl with green, growing brighter, until they were pure emerald and cast a glow in the small cabin. She opened her mouth enough so that Blake could see the tip of her tongue touch two white fangs that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

  “This is me,” she said, voice soft and almost hesitant.

  Blake waited for more. When nothing happened, he was confused. “I’ve already seen you like this, right after we first met, remember?”

  “I remember.” For a moment, she looked as confused as he’d felt. “I thought you must have forgotten, since you asked to see the real me…”

  Blake couldn’t help himself. He laughed, which made her eyes glow an even more vibrant shade of green.

  “What’s funny?” She sounded pissed.

  Blake waved a hand, controlling himself. “I thought maybe you were using some sort of spell to look so goddamn beautiful, but it’s just you. No wonder Mencheres changed you into a vampire. Who wouldn’t want to keep you around forever if they could?”

  Her mouth was still open, but now, it looked more like in disbelief. “You think I’m beautiful like this? But you’re human!”

  She said it as if that was a logical reason he shouldn’t. Blake sighed. “Doesn’t mean I’m blind.”

  She seemed to shrink a little in her chair, and she looked away. “I’m a vampire. I drink blood, I don’t breathe, and my heart doesn’t beat. Don’t I scare you?”

  Blake thought of all the things he’d seen—and done, though thankfully he didn’t remember those parts—the past several months. Elise, scary? She couldn’t be less frightening to him.

  “You don’t scare me.” His voice was rough. “In fact, I think you’re the closest to an angel that I’ll ever get.”

  Something glittered in her eyes, making them brighter. It wasn’t until a pink tear slid down her face that he realized what it was.

  “Oh, God, Elise, don’t cry,” Blake said. He moved the short distance across the cabin to take her in his arms, half-worried she’d shove him away.

  She didn’t. Her arms wrapped around him, amazingly silky skin pressed against his cheek. Elise felt cooler than he did, but not in an icy, lifeless way. No, the supple, soft touch of her flesh felt as alive as his. If he hadn’t known what she was, Blake might have thought the air-conditioning was just set a little low.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It’s so wrong of me to burden you with my tears. Please, let me go.”

  Blake didn’t want to. Holding Elise felt more right than anything he’d done in well, he couldn’t remember howlong. “I need this, too,” Blake said.

  Once, he’d have been too guarded to admit to such vulnerability to a woman he didn’t know very well, but now those games seemed like a waste of time. Time he didn’t have.

  She moved so he could sit on the narrow bench with her instead of balancing over her. Blake pulled Elise onto his lap, resting her head under his chin, and closed his eyes. In the quiet, pressed close to each other in their mutual need for solace, there was more honesty than Blake had experienced in all his other relationships. She’s what I’ve been missing all my life, Blake realized, but not in remorse. It was in deep appreciation that he’d been allowed to meet her before it was too late.

  “I was engaged in the fifties.” Elise’s voice was barely audible over the rumblings of the train. “Edmond didn’t know what I was. I’d told him I couldn’t have children, but he said that didn’t matter. I thought he’d accept the rest of me, too, if I could show him I truly loved him. Mencheres urged me to tell Edmond what I was, not to start our marriage with such a great d
eception between us. So, the night before our wedding, I showed Edmond my true nature.”

  She was trembling. Blake smoothed his hands down her back.

  “He was so horrified.” It was a pain-filled whisper. “He called me defiled, unclean, a hell-spawn. He wouldn’t listen, no matter what I said. He ran off, but I thought with a little time, his fear would ease, and he would come back. He did come back, the very next morning. I woke up and Edmond was in the room with people I’d never seen before. They all had wooden stakes, one as long as a pole, and…”

  Elise’s voice broke. Blake’s arms tightened around her.

  “Edmond had them hold me down. I didn’t struggle, because I thought if Edmond saw I wasn’t fighting them, he’d realize there was nothing to fear from me. I kept pleading with Edmond to stop, but…” Elise’s voice changed. Became flat and emotionless. “Edmond shoved a stake through my heart. I stared into his eyes the whole time. He was furious when I didn’t die—he kept stabbing more wood into my chest. I couldn’t think through the pain, and at last I fought back. Edmond’s neck snapped when he hit the wall. The others were injured, but they lived. They ran away, and I left my house to live below the train station in the tunnels. I’ve mostly avoided people ever since, because if I didn’t care about anyone, then no one could hurt me.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Elise waited for Blake’s reaction. Only Mencheres knew this part of her life, but as a vampire and her sire, he was obviously biased when it came to his opinion of what she’d done. What would Blake think, knowing she’d killed her human fiancé on their wedding day?

  “I can’t believe he’d do that to you,” Blake said. His hands never paused in their soothing path along her back. “I understand why Edmond ran. Being afraid of what you don’t know—yeah, I get that. But I will never understand why he tried to kill you when he came back. How could Edmond do that to you, no matter how shocked he was?”

  Something inside Elise burst. It must have been her last line of emotional defense, because the feelings running through her left her dizzy with their intensity. Who would have thought this virtual stranger’s acceptance would be the grail of forgiveness she’d sought all these long, lonely decades? And why was it that she’d only found him now, just to have to lose him so cruelly in the next two days?

  “I lost someone I loved, too,” Blake said. “I married Gail right out of the army. We were both young, didn’t have a clue how to make a marriage work. I got a job in commodities and worked my way up to being a pretty successful broker on Wall Street. Gail finished college and began teaching. She wanted to start a family; I wanted to wait so I could keep advancing in my career. I was so busy climbing the corporate ladder, I ignored what mattered to Gail. I don’t blame her for divorcing me. Sometimes you have to lose everything to know what you had.”

  Elise was familiar with that. She’d lost everything when she was human during the Great Depression, then again with Edmond, and now she had the feeling that when Blake died, she’d lose everything once more. Why couldn’t there be another way to defeat the demon inside him, aside from killing him?

  “Elise.” Blake drew away enough for her to look at him. “Will you drink from me?”

  “What?” She couldn’t have been more startled if the demon had suddenly appeared.

  He sighed. “I don’t have much time, and that’s all right. But I’d like to think something of me will last. If my blood is inside you, then it’ll live on for as long as you do…”

  Fresh tears came to her eyes. How could she feel so much pain when just a few days ago, she’d been empty inside?

  “…but only if you want to,” Blake continued. “I don’t know if the demon in me makes it too disgusting to–”

  Elise sealed her mouth over his throat, the suddenness of her movement cutting his sentence off. Blake’s heart began to beat with an excited, increased pace that heightened her hunger. She let her tongue probe his neck, tasting his skin. Caressing his pulse. Deciding just where she’d penetrate with her fangs.

  Blake’s breathing accelerated, his chest rubbing hers with its rapid movement. His hands clenched on her back in the same rhythm that she flicked his neck with her tongue.

  “Is this, ahh, going to hurt?” he asked, his voice catching when she pressed her fangs against his throat.

  Elise smiled. “You’ll see.”

  She let her fangs pierce him slowly, savoring the exquisite splitting of his skin and the hot, luscious blood that followed. Blake shuddered, a groan escaping him that she heard and felt against her mouth. She waited, letting the euphoric venom from her fangs spread farther into his bloodstream, before drawing in a long, deep suction.

  Blake’s back arched and he gasped. Elise moaned at the slide of his blood down her throat, warming her. Igniting every preternatural sense in her. She took in another swallow, getting as much pleasure from the way Blake’s hands gripped her as she did by the sweet taste of his blood. His breath came in gasps, the thundering of his pulse against her mouth mirrored by his heartbeat next to her breasts. The rich, spicy scent of him increased, wrapping around her. Intoxicating her. Urging her to take more.

  “God, yes,” Blake moaned, his voice rising. Elise grabbed his head, arching his neck farther back, and bit into him again.

  A hoarse cry came from him, like a lover might make. Even as Elise gave a last, longing swallow, savoring his blood, she drew her thumb across a fang and held the cut to the holes she’d made. They closed before the final sounds faded from Blake.

  She leaned back to see his face. His eyes were closed, dark strands of hair tumbling over his forehead, and he had a sensual, lethargic—and surprised expression on his face.

  His eyes opened in the next moment, coriander blue and beautiful. “That didn’t hurt at all,” he said, a grin tugging at his mouth.

  Elise laughed, bright and filled with the unexpected happiness inside her.

  The smell of sulfur woke her. Blake had fallen asleep in her arms, both of them reclining on the narrow pullout that masqueraded as a bed. Elise wasn’t drowsy. She didn’t want to miss a second of her remaining time with Blake.

  When that awful, burning stench enveloped Blake, her arms hardened and rage filled her. She was prepared to keep the demon from harming Blake—or escaping—so she was taken aback when all the demon did was open his eyes.

  “You and I need to talk,” Xaphan said in a low, gravelly voice.

  Elise watched with loathing as Blake’s skin turned that waxy, sallow color, and red replaced the lovely blue in his eyes.

  “I don’t think so,” Elise growled.

  His lips curled back in a condescending sneer. “Stupid little vampire, don’t you see? I’m your only hope of saving this mortal.”

  Even though she knew better, hope sparked in her. “How? You’ll willingly leave him?” That would mean the demon would get away, but then Blake would be free. God forgive her, she would be okay with that.

  “If I could do that, do you think I’d still be here, kept by two bloodsucking vermin? I’m too deeply buried inside this body to leave while he still has life, vampire. But I’ll make a bargain with you.”

  Don’t listen. You can’t bargain with evil. It will always win if you do.

  “What’s your offer?” Elise asked softly.

  Those malevolent eyes glared into hers. “I’ll give you the rest of this mortal’s natural life span if you get us away from the other vampire. When the mortal eventually dies, then I’ll be free to find a better home.”

  “Liar,” Elise bit off. “You’d try to kill Blake as soon as we got off this train.”

  Xaphan sighed. The sulfur smell from his breath would have gagged Elise if she’d still been human.

  “The years this mortal has left are no more than a tick of the clock to me, but they mean something to you, don’t they? This is a fair offer. If you refuse, try to force me onto the salt flats, all of you will die. You can’t hope to beat me; I am one of the first Fallen. I was around
before Cain was even turned into a vampire.”

  Icy fear slid up Elise’s spine as she stared into the demon’s eyes. There was nothing left of Blake in them. They were ageless, evil, and swirling with red embers. It was as if she’d been afforded a glimpse into hell. How could she and Mencheres think to kill something as old, as powerful, as Xaphan? What if all of them did die on the salt flats, their bodies left to rot under the harsh sun, because she didn’t take the only chance they had at surviving? Could she truly kill Blake anyway, after what he’d come to mean to her?

  Elise thought of having Blake with her for forty, fifty, maybe even sixty years. That would be more happiness than she’d ever allowed herself to believe she’d find in all her undead lifetime. Xaphan might win anyway, if she persisted in taking Blake to the salt flats. Maybe if she took his deal now, in the future, they’d find another way to vanquish Xaphan without killing Blake or letting the demon possess someone else.

  Really, wasn’t this the only possible solution, even if it meant bargaining with a devil?

  “If you care at all for his life—or yours—you’ll see this is the only choice…” Xaphan drew out.

  Blake’s face flashed in her mind, looking completely different than it did now with the demon piloting him. I can’t live like this, he’d said when they first met . Blake had proved countless times that he’d rather die than let the demon get away. In the end, this wasn’t her decision. It was Blake’s—and he’d already made it.

  “No deal,” Elise said, hardening her resolve. “If we all die sending you back to hell, then so be it.”

  The demon howled, becoming a mass of livid movement and flinging both of them up to the ceiling of the cabin in a blur. Elise didn’t let go, wrapping herself around him and letting their hate-filled gazes meet.

  “I’ll kill you,” Xaphan hissed.

  Elise didn’t blink. “You will try.”