Four Dukes and a Devil

by Cathy Maxwell

  Blake went into the back of the van. There wasn’t much room with all the equipment around. Mencheres opened the doors and set up the generators outside. No need to ruin even his slim chance with carbon-monoxide poisoning.

  Elise gestured to the large rectangular piece in the van, which looked to Blake like an elaborate, water-filled coffin.

  “It’ll be easier if you take your clothes off…most of them, at least.”

  She looked almost shy saying that, as if he’d take her suggestion as perverted voyeurism. Blake’s heart squeezed. I’ll miss you forever, he thought, staring into Elise’s beautiful blue-green eyes.

  He stripped to his boxers, then took her in his arms. She hugged him back tightly, her whole body shuddering like something inside her was trying to break out.

  “I know this makes no sense, since we’ve only known each other less than a week, but Blake…if I could spend the rest of my life with just one person, it would be you,” she whispered.

  Blake pulled away. Looked at her face and saw the naked vulnerability, emotion, and need there. He smiled, brushing back a strand of her blond hair.

  “No, Elise. We’ve known each other forever, because that’s how long I’ll love you.”

  Then he kissed her, trying to imprint the feel of her on his mouth, hands, and body before death came to take him away.

  Elise knelt next to the hydro chamber. Blake had been immersed in the glacial water for over fifty minutes. His initial, massive shivering had slowed, as had his pulse and breathing. Confusion was starting to set in even as his eyes kept fluttering closed.

  “Where am I?” he mumbled to Elise. “Too warm. Need to get out.”

  “He’s entering the last stages of hypothermia,” Mencheres said in a low voice. “His body is past feeling cold and is suffused with a false sense of heat instead. It won’t be long now.”

  Elise touched his forehead, but Blake didn’t seem to feel it. His face and neck were open to the air, but the rest of him was submerged in the freezing water. All the better to bring about hypothermic cardiac arrest.

  If she could have traded places with Blake, she’d have done it a million times over. The past forty minutes had been hell, watching him suffer in the container. Her only comfort was knowing that Xaphan would suffer, too. He’d taken Blake over as soon as Blake lay down in the chamber. Xaphan had thrashed around, trying to break everything he could touch. Mencheres restrained him with his power, holding Blake’s body immobile even though the demon writhed and fought inside him. Xaphan had been gone for the past thirty minutes. Elise figured the demon was resting up for one last stand.

  Blake’s heart skipped several beats. Elise tensed, meeting Mencheres’s eyes. Soon. Very soon.

  Panic made Elise want to snatch Blake out of the water and start to warm him up now. What if this didn’t work? What if this was the last time she’d ever see Blake? Dear God, how could she stand her heart being demolished yet again?

  Blake said something she couldn’t understand. Elise bent closer until his mouth was almost next to her ear.

  “What is it, darling?”

  “Elise.” Her name was garbled and breathy, like Blake had barely the strength to form it. “Sing me to sleep.”

  Blake’s eyes were closed, so Elise didn’t have to worry about him seeing her tears. She started to sing, dipping her hand into the freezing water so she could hold his.

  Blake’s breathing became shallower, the intervals between his breaths extending longer and longer. His pulse was erratic, too, at times speeding up in bursts, then growing more and more sluggish. By the time Elise reached the last line of the song, Blake’s heart had stopped completely.

  She stared at him, feeling more frozen inside than the icy water that brought about his death. Blake’s eyes were dilated, no spark of life in them. Just glassy, like a doll’s eyes.

  Elise thought she’d been prepared to see him this way. That she was strong enough to handle it, but something inside her shattered. She ripped off the cover of the chamber and grabbed Blake up in the next instant.

  Mencheres’s hands shot out, stopping her. Keeping her from lifting Blake all the way out of that awful, killing water.

  “Wait,” he said.

  “No,” Elise snarled. “I have to bring him back!”

  Mencheres didn’t loosen his grip, and she felt his hold on more than just her arms.

  “Not. Yet.”

  Elise would have fought him, her own sire, whom she trusted more than anyone in the world. But a blast of power in the air around them stopped her. Sulfur fumes seemed to crawl up her nose, and a howl of rage filled the van until it shook.

  “You fool,” Xaphan hissed.

  The words didn’t come from Blake’s mouth. They came from behind her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Elise didn’t have time to turn around before the doors blew off the van, and Mencheres was sucked out into the sunshine. She dropped Blake, careful to make sure his head was hanging outside the chamber, and ran out of the van.

  “Mencheres!” she screamed.

  Nothing was around but miles of empty, ominous white salt. Where was Mencheres? Her sire was the most powerful vampire she’d ever met, how could he simply disappear?

  Something slammed into her from behind. Elise fell, getting a face full of salt. Then she was propelled up and flung into the side of the van, hard enough to make it tilt on its tires.

  “Bring him back,” Xaphan growled near her ear.

  Elise whirled, but there was no one there. Another blow knocked her into the van again. Then another and another, all made by someone she couldn’t even see.

  Elise tasted blood where her lip had split. The bright afternoon sunlight, naked of any cloud cover, felt like needles on her skin. Something seized Elise’s hair, grinding her face into a ragged piece of metal from the dent her body had made.

  “Bring him back,” Xaphan said again, and she was shoved into the van.

  Blake was still slumped over the chamber, motionless. Elise pulled him all the way out of the water, laying him on the van’s floor. He was as white as the salt outside, all the color gone from his skin, and his skin was cool enough to feel like he’d been carved out of ice.

  The van gave a violent rock that had equipment sliding into the corner.

  “Stop it!” Elise snapped. “If you break everything in here, I can’t save him.”

  “Do it now,” that horrible, disembodied voice ordered.

  Her hands trembled as she set the breather over Blake’s mouth, turning on the machine that would pump warmed, humid air into Blake’s lungs. We must reheat his core slowly, Mencheres had said. Too much artificial warmth to his extremities will make lethal gases fill Blake’s bloodstream.

  Therefore, Elise didn’t use the hot packs with Blake yet. She covered him with blankets and set up the IV to fill an artery with heated blood. Another IV was inserted for a warmed saline solution. Then Elise began CPR, forcing Blake’s stationary heart to pump.

  An invisible hand slapped her across the mouth. “Faster,” Xaphan said.

  The demon’s voice seemed to rise and fade at the same time. Elise took out a syringe with an elongated needle, punching that needle through Blake’s breastbone to inject epinephrine directly into his heart. Then she began compressions to his chest again.

  “Bring him back now,” Xaphan roared. The van lifted off the ground a foot and smashed back down, shattering the windows.

  Elise paused to take a long, poignant look at Blake’s face. That demon is going to regret what it did to me, he’d told her. Don’t try to take that away from me, Elise.

  That was what she was doing right now, taking away his choice because it hurt her too much to honor it. Searing pain tore through Elise’s heart. I can’t do it. I love you too much to betray you like that.

  She kissed Blake’s cold lips, then sat back. “It’s over,” she told the demon.

  A viselike grip settled around her throat, lifting her until her head
banged on the ceiling.

  “You will obey me,” Xaphan said. Waves of sulfur curled around her, the odor so thick, it felt like it was slithering inside her.

  Elise could barely talk with the pressure on her throat, but she managed to force out her reply.

  “Go…to…hell.”

  The van shook, metal curling back from the frame, before it was lifted and slammed repeatedly to the ground. Elise used all of her strength to tear away from the force that held her. She crawled toward Blake, covering him with her body when she reached him. Shielding him from metal shards that sliced through the air, ripping into her flesh and gouging the equipment around them. For a few nightmarish minutes, it felt like the entire world was being shaken and ripped apart.

  A piercing shriek scalded her ears, causing Elise to lift her head and look in its direction. In the open doorway of the ruined van, a cloud of black flame appeared. It stretched into the form of a man with long, smoke-tipped wings coming from his back.

  “Die,” the demon hissed. That cloud of burning sulfur shot straight toward Elise and Blake.

  Elise braced herself but didn’t try to escape. She wouldn’t leave Blake, even if it meant her death.

  Mencheres suddenly appeared in front of her, his power crackling the air around him. The flames reached him—and stopped, dissolving into smoke mere inches from his body.

  “You’re not strong enough anymore, Xaphan,” Mencheres stated. “Your time is up.”

  Xaphan screamed, but even as that awful noise reverberated, the smoke from the tips of his wings spread. It engulfed his legs, dissolving them out from under him. Then his arms, his torso, and finally, his sneering face, until there was nothing left of Xaphan but the faint scent of sulfur in the wind.

  Elise closed her eyes for a second. The demon was gone. He couldn’t hurt Blake—or another innocent person—anymore.

  Then her eyes snapped open. “Help me,” she said to Mencheres, scrambling to get the equipment set up again.

  Mencheres moved quickly, gathering up the pieces of equipment that had been scattered around the van, but the outcome was soon obvious. Everything had been damaged. The generators weren’t working, which meant no heated oxygen, blood, or saline, and most of the IV lines had been shredded. Elise looked at the wreckage of their medical supplies with numbing panic. They’d never get Blake to a hospital in time, even if Mencheres flew him there, and they needed these things to bring him back to life.

  Elise made her decision in the next moment, a steely determination filling her. I won’t let you die. I won’t.

  She grabbed the nearest unbroken syringe she could find and rammed it into her throat, drawing out her blood. Then she plunged that same needle into Blake, injecting her blood into his artery.

  “Begin compressions,” she directed Mencheres, blowing into Blake’s mouth.

  Mencheres gave her a look she couldn’t read, but she didn’t care, whatever it meant. She kept blowing air into Blake’s lungs, pausing only to draw more blood from her to inject it into Blake. After five minutes, she had Mencheres stop, but Blake’s heart was still silent.

  “Let’s warm him up more,” she said, and gathered everything that still held heat and piled it around Blake. All remaining warmed blood and saline bags were pressed to his armpits and groin, plus more blankets were piled on top of him. Elise even hauled the broken generators over to place Blake’s body on top of them, since they were still warmed from their recent activity.

  “Again, more compressions,” she said, and injected another syringe of her blood into Blake.

  Mencheres complied, manipulating Blake’s heart while she continued to blow air into his mouth. After another several minutes, Blake felt warmer. Elise’s hopes leapt when his heart made a few faint, erratic beats, but then it fell silent again.

  “Come on,” Elise shouted in fear and frustration. “You’re not ready to die yet!”

  “Elise…” Mencheres said.

  “No,” she cut him off. “I’m not giving up on him.”

  She looked at Blake—silent, pale, beautiful—and did the only thing she could think of. She bit into his neck, right at the jugular.

  “Begin compressions,” she said to Mencheres. Her tone dared him to argue.

  Mencheres pressed on Blake’s chest in those measured, controlled pumps. Elise sucked, drawing Blake’s blood into her with the help of Mencheres’s actions. She drank deeply, chilled by the temperature of Blake’s blood but not stopping until what she’d taken from him would have been lethal if he wasn’t clinically dead.

  “Now,” Elise said. “We’re going to transfuse my blood to Blake. All of it.”

  Mencheres found a catheter that wasn’t broken and set up the line in Elise’s throat, positioning the other end of the IV in Blake’s jugular. Once it was set, Elise closed her eyes, willing her blood out of her body and into that narrow plastic tube.

  It took ten minutes for Elise to drain herself into Blake. When she was done, she felt light-headed, as if she hadn’t fed in weeks. She found the portable defibrillator under the remains of the car seat and charged the electrodes, pausing only to send up a silent plea. Please. Don’t take him from me.

  Then she sent the volts into Blake’s chest. His heart fluttered again for an extra few beats after the shock, but then stilled once more. Elise charged the defibrillator and hit him with another set of volts. Blake’s heart responded, beating on its own for a full minute, then it quieted again.

  Mencheres touched her arm very lightly. “You’ve done all you can. Even if this worked, Blake’s heart won’t restart enough for him to live as a human again. He will either rise as a vampire, or he will stay dead.”

  Elise put her arms around Blake. “So now we wait?”

  Her sire nodded. “Yes. We wait.”

  Epilogue

  Elise looked around at her home under the defunct train station in the District. In a lot of ways, she would miss this place. But a promise was a promise.

  She hefted her books into a double-plied leaf and lawn bag, thinking she’d leave the bed and chair for another lost soul to make use of. Maybe her former home would provide the same kind of refuge to someone else that she’d needed these last few decades. The thought pleased her.

  An arm slid around her waist, the muscled flesh the same temperature as her own. “Ready to go?”

  Elise smiled and turned into Blake’s embrace. He was faintly flushed from a recent breakfast of plasma, but the new silky luminescence to his skin looked very different than when he’d been human.

  “I’m ready now.”

  Elise was ready for a lot of things, the first of which was living with the man she loved. And maybe next was learning how to drive. Or how to play chess.

  Now that she had Blake, the possibilities were suddenly endless—and wonderful.

  About Jeaniene Frost

  New York Times bestseller JEANIENE FROST lives with her husband and their very spoiled dog in Florida. Although not a vampire herself, she confesses to having pale skin, wearing a lot of black, and sleeping in late whenever possible. And, while she can’t see ghosts, she loves to walk through old cemeteries. Jeaniene also loves poetry and animals, but fears children and hates to cook. She is currently at work on her next bestselling Night Huntress novel.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Catch of the Century

  Sophia Nash

  To Philip Vanderbogart Nash, a handsome devil and a most beloved uncle…

  Chapter One

  Victoria Givan would rather be alone and plump with coin in a London rookery than walking beside the colorful profusion of flowers here in the dales of Northampton. Indeed, the end would come all the quicker in the former scenario.

  Lord, how she loathed the countryside. A casual observer would never guess that the turmoil of worries tumbling through her mind this fine spring day rivaled the stories to be found in the sole possession Victoria carried�
�a book of Canterbury Tales.

  This was her last thought before the shrill blast of a carriage horn interrupted all. “Take heed. Make way!” A driver’s voice rang out from one of the three regal coaches barreling down the turnpike.

  For the fifth time that hour, Victoria hurried her three young charges to the edge of the road to avoid being trampled. Spirited horses shook their heads, and polished brass and metal traces jangled in the air as the lead team jigged closer at a spanking pace. At the last moment, the first carriage swerved toward them, and Victoria spied the silhouette of a masculine profile beyond the gilt-edged window. The rear wheel passed perilously close to her boots, and a flag of wind whipped over her as she stumbled back.

  The trio of adolescent boys reached to steady her and murmured words of concern. She coughed and sputtered amid the clouds of dust kicked up by the departing entourage. What sort of uncaring person had the audacity to nearly run them down without even a—

  There was a shout, and the impressive set of equipages came to a dead halt a hundred yards away, before she could catch her breath and quell her frustration.

  A stylishly liveried driver from the lead carriage jumped down and opened the highly lacquered door.

  “Wait here,” she admonished the boys. She strode forward a few paces, then stopped—her legs shaky, her composure even more so.

  A tall, daunting gentleman unfolded his frame from the polished carriage, his gloves and hat fisted in one large hand. It was obvious even at this distance that he was as dashing in his elegant clothes as she was uncommonly shabby in her faded gray gown. His long, loose strides ate up the distance between them, and suddenly, he was right in front of her, his gold quizzing glass gleaming as it lay amid the starched shirt linen between the lapels of an austere dark blue superfine coat.